Too many of us grew up in families wracked with pain. Emotional wounds accumulate in settings of neglect, abuse, bereavement, molestation, violence, and misery. As adults, these ancient injuries undermine our happiness. We often choose poorly in relationships, careers, and pastimes. Even if we don’t make gross mistakes, we lack the confidence to endorse our own choices. We feel uneasy in good times and overwhelmed in bad. This is the legacy of childhood trauma.

At times we shut down emotionally, closing ourselves off from the affection we crave. Other times we act out and hurt the ones we love or destroy our own reputations.

Still, healing can happen after even the worst of upbringings. It takes time, and backslides are unavoidable, but eventually we stabilize in greater maturity and emotional openness than we ever imagined.

In the last post we highlighted the body’s gentle wisdom and how often we ignore it. As I move further along the path to peace of mind, the importance of befriending physical nature becomes ever more obvious. The injuries of the past are stored in our biology, where they affect every aspect of our lives.

For instance, upon remembering painful events from our past, our minds recoil in shame, anger, or sorrow. In equal measure, our bodies respond with corresponding feelings of hollowness, tension, or exhaustion. Just as emotional surges reflect the state of mind that accompanied past trauma, somatic symptoms recreate the physical feelings recorded at the time of the original hardship. Often, such emotional and somatic reactions arise without any conscious memory of the childhood injury that caused them. For example, when a spouse criticizes us, we may feel ashamed and small, or furious and explosive, without overtly connecting these responses to the parental harshness that first established the pattern.

Before we learn healthier strategies, our habitual response to distressing sensations is avoidance. We turn our mental spotlight away from our body’s messages. We may lose ourselves in thought and analysis, ignoring the cramp in our gut, the ache in our shoulders, or the shallowness of our breath. We may evade direct, felt experience by focusing on the actions and misdeeds of others. We may use the distraction of intoxicants, food, sex, or television as shields against painful emotional and sensual turmoil. We become skilled escape artists.

The solution can be found in the body. In fact, we cannot fully transcend our pain until we face its somatic legacy. At first, this feels excruciating. When we begin to tune into our bodily responses, we become aware of a sensory universe populated by knots, soreness, burning, blockage, agitation, and numbness. These discomforts are the physical counterpart to the emotional uproar that also arises. We discover how underneath our superficial and obsessional thought, our core system buzzes with anxiety, grief, anger, and fear. It all seems so noisy and confusing that we may find ourselves pouring a bowl of cereal with little memory of rising from meditation and heading to the kitchen.

The good news is that as we reacquaint ourselves with our bodies, the sensations become less intense. We relax into nonjudgmental awareness, which lessens the stimulation of tension and pain. It can seem like our systems shout less loudly when they have our attention.

Furthermore, we can learn to enter even the most unpleasant symptoms with an attitude of openness, acceptance, and love. In my own case, I experience deep, burning pain in my neck and upper back that worsens during times of stress. It is easy to hate this discomfort and resist it, but doing so only increases the misery. A better strategy is to move toward the soreness with focused attention and gentle affection. I apologize to my neck for all the times my activities harmed it. I feel compassion for its burden of muscle spasm, arthritis, poor posture, and neglect. I honor the hard work it performs in service of supporting my head every day.

By treating my body with the same care I would treat any beloved animal, I send a message of acceptance and affection to my entire being. The self-compassion resonates on the somatic, psychological, and spiritual levels. It feels profoundly healing. Often, the pain seems to abate with this practice, but the goal isn’t to alter my experience in any way. I seek only to honor my body and whatever it communicates.

All painful experiences can be approached in similar fashion. Crushing sorrow, vertiginous loneliness, shattering fear, and even livid rage can all be embraced with this attitude of loving, wise embrace. One finds that life is full of pain, but that this does not mean it is going badly. For as we open to our discomfort and terror, as we accept uncertainty and loss, we automatically increase our ability to feel joy, love, and spacious bliss.

The body will teach us the inexhaustible majesty of life when we surrender to both its wounds and its strengths.

Life promises us nothing but the experience of living until we die. We cannot expect our dreams to be fulfilled. We cannot avoid hardship and loss. These principles apply to all.

But even though no one can squeeze guarantees out of fate, there is great unevenness in our fortunes. Some people simply seem luckier than others. They enjoy families that provide more resources of love and support. As a consequence, or maybe because of inborn personality factors, they grow into confident, resourceful, and resilient adults. They suffer little self-doubt and have no sense of self-loathing. Their lives unfold relatively smoothly, and as they enter the later stages of adulthood they can look back with pride at how they built success. They may have achieved career acclaim, raised happy children, and/or simply radiated good cheer as they walked upright through the world.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way for everyone, and we all know of human situations that fall short of such comfort and success. First, there are the large populations across the globe that suffer under extreme poverty, chronic warfare, and oppression. We see the images of shantytowns and war-torn cities in which stunned and dusty children wander wide-eyed and alone. We observe their innocent, wounded faces and wonder: what can these orphans possibly hope for in the future? And yet, they seem far away and unconnected to our affluent societies. We try to reassure ourselves that these kids don’t suffer like we would in the same situation, because they don’t know what they’re missing. It’s a vain and selfish hope, of course, but sometimes it’s our only defense against feeling overwhelmed by the unfairness in the world.

We naturally think in terms of this culture’s material advantages, but unless poverty and turmoil are so severe that food, clothing, and shelter are compromised, we cannot assume that wealthier populations are happier. I haven’t been to Mexico since the recent outbreaks of violence, but in earlier years the joy among the country’s populace was impressive. Despite much lower living standards than enjoyed in the North, the Mexicans seemed far more contented and jolly than Americans. Why? I suspect because they lived in more stable communities, where friends and family didn’t regularly move away. They knew their neighbors their entire lives, and lived embedded in rich relational webs.

In contrast, many of us in the USA and other Western countries were raised in isolated nuclear families. Relocations were so common that we often didn’t feel close to many neighbors and developed few longterm friendships. If we were unlucky enough to have alcoholic, depressed, and/or violent parents, we had nowhere to turn. We may have suffered severe traumas or bereavements in relative isolation.

We may then have grown up to face the same demons that tormented those who raised us. We may have had to battle addictions, chronic sorrow, and/or festering rage ourselves.

Those of us who endured abusive, bereaved, or neglected upbringings entered adulthood with few useful tools for dealing with life. Many of us require decades to sort out the injuries, the humiliations, the recriminations, and the grief. Sadly, many who come from such homes simply deteriorate and die early, tragically, or alone.

But if we survive, then what? Before long we find ourselves in middle age with lives that look less than idyllic. We often have fewer friends, less stable families, and more fatigue. Childhood trauma translates into adult difficulty, and many of us end up with lives littered by broken relationships and abandoned dreams.

And then what? Ultimately, if we hope to find peace, we learn how to cope. We mature. We forgive the damaged parents who hurt us. We forgive the entire cosmos for failing to meet our childhood needs. We find meaning in all the hardship, setbacks, and breakdowns. We become wiser and more spiritual. We begin to find beauty in every nook and cranny of creation.

But still, we can easily see that our lives could have been better. It is all too obvious that we have not thrived like the more fortunate. We may feel isolated; many of us suffer health problems that resulted from the massive stress and poorly chosen coping strategies of earlier years. We feel damaged and aged in a culture that worships youth, wealth, success, and beauty.

Is there any upside to this realization? Perhaps only this: we are also the ones who are forced to enlarge our hearts the most. Our pain, isolation, grief, and remorse all compel us to learn unconditional acceptance and radical forgiveness. Despite all the mistakes and brokenness, we lovingly embrace ourselves, our families, our communities, and whatever divine forces might be witnessing this mysterious passion play.

There are other paths to growth, but loss, injury, and failure can be potent stimuli to spiritual practice and mystical awakening. Humble but exalted realization becomes the consolation prize for the brokenhearted who persist. At first such gentle wisdom barely tips the scales as we judge our lives, but as cosmic love and insight grow, we begin to feel less and less unfortunate. Until, finally, the day comes when we look back on our fractured histories and see their value, their majesty, and what in retrospect seems like Grace.

At some point in every human life, pain threatens to unravel everything that matters. For some of us the day comes in childhood. We may suffer the death of a parent, unspeakable trauma, or simple grinding neglect. For others life feels fairly comfortable until adulthood, but sooner or later fate steers us off our desired road into threatening territory. Perhaps a child gets sick, or a marriage ends, or a career fails. Maybe illness strikes and the end of life comes into view. Grief, failure, and injury shatter our peace, so we begin to seek answers.

At first, we search in all the usual places. We ask our close friends and trusted relatives for advice. Some of us consult therapists or psychiatrists who guide us back into our past or write us prescriptions. Some of us enter houses of worship or meditation in hope of enlisting the help of profound mystical or mental forces. We pray and meditate, desperate for answers.

Even with all this exploration, solutions seldom come. All too often, life deals ever more hardship as we scramble to find a lifeline that will help us endure the escalating pain. We may begin to waver in our resolve to continue; we begin to question whether life offers enough enrichment to make its difficulties worthwhile. We wonder why, as we try so hard to solve our dilemma, we feel no better.

These despairing moments are fertile. They mark the ego’s looming defeat and the foundational collapse that allows deep wisdom to develop organically. Because the problem is exactly that we are trying so hard to find answers, but we do not need answers.

What we need is to break free from all seeking, all efforts to understand, and all analysis. What we need is to quell the mind’s ceaseless efforts to make sense of life, its endless construction of models, and its doomed dream of figuring out how to extinguish the inevitable pain of existence.

What we need is silence.

The first layer of silence is a respite from constant mental toil. We enjoy a break from churning our complicated facts, important memories, and worrisome predictions. We open to peace of mind. This is the introductory gift of learning to quiet the mind’s chatter: a chance to rest. In a spacious moment of stillness, we begin to appreciate how struggling to solve life never leads to solutions, only to confusion and exhaustion. A boundless relief comes with abandoning, even for a moment, all our strenuous, futile striving.

The second layer of silence is the recognition that verbal reasoning is only a shadow of life, not life itself. Before we get to this stage, we believe the stories we tell ourselves. For instance if we think, “I can’t continue in the face of such pain,” we believe our mind’s dire prediction and become paralyzed. As we wait for the sorrow to lift, or the fear to abate, the stasis that results simply worsens our mental anguish. But as we learn the value of quieting inner dialogue, we begin to see that these strings of words have no solidity. They are tokens of interpretations of models of our lives. Neither the tokens, nor the interpretations, nor the models are life itself. As we begin to quiet the inner verbiage, we recognize it to be arbitrary and unhelpful. Instead of thinking about what’s going on, we experience life as it is in this moment. Nearly always, life as it is entails far less pain than life as we think it is.

The third layer of silence is beyond description. It is simple and unalloyed bliss. This essay I’m now writing was inspired by a quote my aunt sent, taken from Listening to Your Life, by Frederick Buechner. The theologian provides a good description of this final gift of inner quiet:

I have been conscious but not conscious of anything, not even of myself. I have been surrounded by the whiteness of snow. I have heard a stillness that encloses all sounds stilled the way whiteness encloses all colors stilled, the way wordlessness encloses all words stilled. I have sensed the presence of a presence. I have felt a promise promised.

Buechner’s words come as close as words can to capturing the ultimate fruit of stilling the inner dialogue.

It is important to recognize that quieting the mind’s verbal stream yields benefits at every stage. Early on, we are granted rest. A little later, we gain insight into the emptiness of words. And finally, we discover what we were hoping for all along: an unshakeable foundation for peace of mind.

My childhood didn’t always seem so perfect. For years, decades even, I complained about it to anyone who’d listen. It never took long to get sympathy, or shock, or a compliment on how well I’d turned out, “in spite of it all.” My story of a disastrous upbringing served me well, I suppose, but it’s time to move on. Nowadays it seems very clear that I owe my present satisfaction with life to the way my family raised me. It no longer looks like a disaster, it looks spectacular! Not easy, not desirable, and nothing I’d wish on another, but ideal for my needs.

Since I manage to fit my family of origin’s dramatic tale into about every third essay, it is likely that most readers already know it. But for those who may not have heard the saga, I’ll pen a brief summary:

My earliest memories take me back to vicious arguments between my parents. These titanic struggles led to my father leaving the household when I was four. It hurt to lose his presence, and even though he took my sister and me to an amusement park every couple of weeks, I missed him terribly. My mother felt his absence too, and her chronic melancholy grew worse. Over the next two years she entered the psychiatric hospital many times for shock treatments and whatever else the doctors thought she needed. Despite this treatment, state-of-the-art in its day, she deteriorated and killed herself when I was in first grade. It was painful watching her suffer, but it was worse losing her. Especially since within a few weeks we moved to another town to live with my dad and his new wife who, it turned out, hated children. This woman treated us with appalling cruelty, as you can read in a memoir piece if you’re interested. Aside from my dad’s overwork and alcoholism, and my stepmother’s sadism, I also suffered from moving and changing schools every year until the fourth grade. At that point we settled in West Los Angeles where two years later my sister suffered a psychotic break following heavy LSD use, and it fell to me to guard her from self-harm. She moved out not long after, and her departure freed my parents to bring their sex parties home. Needless to say, the weekend orgies disturbed my budding development into a young adolescent boy. For so many reasons, I began turning to substance abuse and rebellious behavior, and was arrested four times before finishing high school. I left home while partway through my senior year to move to Berkeley and live with my sweetheart.

Perhaps you can imagine how all that loss, trauma, and chaos might have damaged me. Indeed, until recently I viewed my past as nothing but an awful handicap to overcome.

No longer. Now that I am contented and feel accepting of the large-scale drama we all live as humans, it appears to me that my childhood turned out exactly right. Not only did I see and experience much hardship and grief early on, and so saw the uncontrollable transience of life play out right from the start, I also benefitted from exposure to many different views and socioeconomic conditions. One part of my family was very wealthy, another very poor. Some relatives lived on farms, some in posh suburbs, some in dreary apartments. Some resided in the Midwest, others in Los Angeles. Whereas my father was atheistic, left-wing and socialist, many of my other relatives were devout Christians and staunch Republicans. Every summer I made the rounds, leaving the beachside neighborhood in LA (where I spent the school year under the oppressive thumb of my stepmother) to drift from relative to relative in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.

All in all, this diversity of experience, the tremendous stressors I endured, and the lack of adequate parenting shaped me into the person writing today. And since I’ve learned to like that guy, I now appreciate the environment that formed him–I mean me.

This is my best acceptance, my dearest gratitude. Seeing the past that once haunted me as a gift has changed my vision of myself from a wounded soul into a blessed one. Sure, you could call it denial, but I don’t feel like anything is being buried. Rather, I’m opening all the valves and letting the many streams of experience that formed me each flow freely. No judgment, no resentment, no regret. You could say I’m just making up reasons to feel better about the past, and I suppose that’s true. But there are many grains of truth in this new viewpoint, and I sure prefer thinking of myself as a man from a perfect upbringing rather than the damaged child of a mistaken one.

If you had suggested five years ago that I would attain such appreciation for what happened, I’d have called you deluded. Of course, back then I also wasn’t sure that life would ever feel enjoyable or even tolerable. Yet here I am, loving my life, my past, and advancing willingly toward the future, no matter what it brings. And I thank my past history for bringing me to this point of Grace.

If I could offer one piece of advice to the world, tonight it would be this: always remember that the people who hurt you the most might also teach you the most about love. Those who’ve looked around this site have seen the “memories” section, where there is a long piece about my stepmother. This woman dealt me great pain. The repeated traumas resounded through much of my childhood and set the tone of my adult life. Despite my stepmother’s mistreatment of me, and for reasons I’ve never fully understood, I always loved her. As the memoir explains, I’m aware that this attachment may be the same affection a prisoner feels for a sadistic guard. But perhaps there was a deeper reason for this love, one I’ve been loath to acknowledge before now.

Without the ordeals of my childhood, and especially my abusive and tormenting stepmother, I would not have become the person who writes this blog. Maybe I would have become a happier person, or a more likable and popular person, or a more successful person. Probably, in fact, I would have become all these superior beings. But I doubt my spirit would have blossomed as fully. The crush of my upbringing, which led to long periods of despair off and on through earlier adulthood, had the effect of freeing me from my ego. Not all the way, of course, for the ego is a tenacious and hardy creature. But the fiery turmoil of hardship, loss, and defeat tempered my spirit until it grew brave enough emerge from beneath my ego’s false shelter, at least some of the time. I’m not saying everyone needs to go through such trauma to find the soul’s peaceful center, but that was my path.

Why does this come up now? Because of a book. I won’t disclose the title, because that would give a specific that might distract from the message of my experience, which I believe to be universal.

Imagine a person who has harmed you more than any other, a person you have every right to hate. Further picture that person giving you a book on your last meeting, just before she died. You were so upset by this person, and everything that your relationship with her represented, that you couldn’t even open the book for three years. The slender hardcover sat on your shelf until your spouse gently called attention to it.

At last you begin to read the book, and you find profound guidance. You can hardly believe that this person, who as far as you know never expressed a single spiritual thought, gave you this powerful work. The novel she handed you turns out to be an allegory that matches your life and hardships perfectly. The beauty of it makes you weep. And you realize, long after the death of your nemesis, that she handed you a key to your true nature. The person you once imagined an archetypal obstacle to peace of mind is now guiding your next step toward clarity.

My stepmother is gone from this life. But as has been true since she first entered my sphere, she occupies a unique and unavoidable place in my heart. There is much aching in this space, but there is also ineffable beauty, a combination of heartache and tenderness that connects me with the human tragedy we all endure, the drama we hope (or should hope) to transcend.

I forgive her completely, and I did so some time ago after my heart began to settle at last. But tonight I honor her for her final, healing gift to me. I recognize the harm she caused me, and I understand one book doesn’t make that injury go away. Still, I appreciate the gesture. I feel badly that her life caused her such pain that she felt compelled to vent her frustrations on a child. I hope and pray that she is free at last.

Ernest Hemingway once said that intelligent people are rarely happy.

Having always been more of a Faulkner than a Hemingway fan, I’m going to disagree with Ernest. I know many intelligent, happy people. Of course, often they are Buddhist meditators, or in AA, or involved in some other framework that helps them address the challenges of life. It takes work to be happy, and intelligent people may need to work harder because they can see more problems than those with simpler outlooks. But intelligence is not a major obstacle to happiness, in my opinion.

It is well-recognized that many creative people have mood issues. Poets suffer notoriously high suicide rates, and Hemingway obviously falls into this category of moody artist. In many cases, the artist uses his or her medium to give voice to emotional turmoil. The biographies of mentally distressed artists and authors often reveal upbringings light on love, or heavy on cruelty and loss, or both. I suspect that artistry and moodiness spring from the same sources, and doubt that creativity by itself causes depression and other affective difficulties. (Some authorities, including Kay Redfield Jamison, might disagree.) The movie Amadeus comes to mind; it depicts Mozart’s genius and instability in counterpoint to his father’s domineering and critical attitude.

Childhood hardship, especially if severe, radically diminishes the chances for spontaneous adult happiness. Modern research suggests that emotionally or physically threatening experiences alter the brain’s fine structure, and these changes linger. Because my stepmother often crept into my childhood bedroom to wake me up and vent her anger, sometimes by strangulation, I occasionally jump up screaming in the dead of night. This happens less and less often as I work through my emotional wounds, but whatever she did to my nervous system has persisted into my fifties. The brain remembers, even if consciousness doesn’t (in my case I believe my recollections of childhood trauma are pretty complete, but many people have blank spaces in memory that keep traumatic histories more or less beneath awareness.)

We hear a lot of talk about the biological underpinnings of mental illness. In my family there are stark examples where people of roughly the same genetic stock have very different levels of mental well being. Without exception, the ones who have the biggest personality and emotional problems are those who suffered trauma in childhood. My relatives who were fortunate to have been raised in loving, stable environments have escaped mood and personality disorders. This dovetails with what I’ve observed in my professional and volunteer work among the mentally ill, and with much (thought not all) of what I’ve read in technical literature.

Biology establishes a predisposition, but major mental illness is most likely to occur when people with genetic tendencies also suffer childhood mistreatment. This is definitely true in mood and personality disorders; schizophrenia might be different, though even here some people believe trauma plays a decisive role. Without mistreatment, there may be moodiness or quirkiness, but it does not as frequently become crippling.

Childhood trauma makes joy in life difficult, but not impossible. Sensitive, intelligent people feel and see more of the pain in the world. This makes it more challenging to remain upbeat, but unhappiness is not fated. Painful upbringings, intelligence, creativity, and genetic predisposition all play roles in mood disorders. I’m arguing that the first is by far the largest contributor to unhappiness, but no combination of circumstances is absolutely insurmountable.

Still, happiness takes work. It demands attention to thought and behavior, and is promoted by searching for meaning in life. Meditation, exercise, study, and social activities all contribute. Many people make progress with therapy and/or medication.

Always remember that neither the past, nor one’s abilities, nor one’s genes, completely determine the future. As someone who long despaired of ever feeling good about life, I can now attest that even dreadful childhood trauma and loss (plus whatever measure of intelligence and creativity I possess) do not necessarily prevent happiness. There is hope. Always, there is hope.

Today’s post adheres to the plan laid out last time, but it’s not as short as I’d hoped. What follows is a description of one of the tools I use to achieve and maintain Peace, Balance & Clarity. It presents one of my tricks for realizing my blog’s tagline in my own life.

A recent post mentioned (in passing) that I’ve been using a new and helpful meditation. It probably isn’t my creation, but if I heard of it before I’m not sure where. Meditation may be too strong a word; visualization or fantasy might fit better. The basic technique involves imagining a better childhood and family life than I actually experienced.

Longterm readers (assuming there are any) have no doubt heard too many times about my crummy childhood. Rather than repeat it, I’ve written a synopsis on a separate page, for anyone interested. This post doesn’t require that you know the whole story, and in their essence all unhappy childhoods are the same. The truth is, I’ve spent far too much time reliving the sad details of my upbringing. My bereaved and abused childhood has become the background mythology of my life. Although there were fun times, I seldom relive them. Far more often I think about the loneliness, grief, abuse, and neglect. As much as I hate to admit it, I have built a story of myself as a Ruined Child. My aunt tells me that at my youngest ages I was an exceedingly affectionate and happy toddler. But fate and cruelty crushed that innate sweetness, or at least that’s the myth.

So what is my visualization? I picture a completely different upbringing. A big reason my parents first fought and then divorced (setting in motion the destruction of my childhood) was that my father insisted on moving to Los Angeles, where he had discovered ‘swinging’ and ‘free love’. My mother, a proper midwestern girl, hated the place and the lifestyle for which my dad yearned, and refused to go along. In real life, they divorced. In my ‘meditation’, they reached a compromise and moved to Berkeley instead. My father enjoyed the liberal, collegiate environment, and my mother managed to steer him away from the orgies. Rather than dwelling as a bitter left-winger in a conservative neighborhood, my father became a happy radical Berkeley professor. Rather than dying in a psychiatric ward, my mother continued her social work career by helping the mentally ill. She only worked half-time, however, and was home every day after school. I’d arrive home and sweep through the door with my friends, and she’d serve us cookies and milk with a broad smile, patting me lovingly on the head. In other words, I picture a childhood exactly opposite to what really happened. I build the scene out in my mind, visualizing the neighborhood with its huge leafy sycamores, the 1920′s vintage house and its redwood wainscoting, my sweet mother with her floral apron. I smell her chocolate chip cookies and feel her fingers mussing my hair. It feels as ‘real’ as any ‘true’ memory.

At a recent meditation seminar led by a therapist, I mentioned this practice and was told that the brain can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality in memory. While I believe there are embodied traumatic experiences that the brain does hold onto as implicit memory, and that can’t easily be overwritten, the narrative stories we remember may well be subject to revision. So if I spend enough time reliving my imaginary childhood, perhaps my brain will gradually heal itself. More important, perhaps my mind will let go of the Myth of the Ruined Child. In fact, that seems to be happening. Now, whenever the Ugly Past enters my mind, I replace it with the (imagined) Happy Childhood. Whereas in the old days I often made myself feel sorrowful and unwanted by replaying my upbringing, I now actually feel cheered by trips down Memory Lane. A sense of myself as a Loved Being is growing within. Does it matter that the memory I’m reliving is fictional? Not if it works, in my opinion.

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.

In my upcoming talk this Saturday, I hope to establish three central points: 1) People have the capacity for elevated, selfless modes of consciousness that go a long way toward easing psychic distress. Higher mind states do not lead to perfect happiness that never ebbs; rather, they make life enjoyable despite inevitable trials and jagged emotion. 2) Contrary to the standard model of mental health care, which expects emotional growth to be slow and arduous, people can abruptly transcend despair. 3) There are steps we can take to make such decisive transformations more likely.

My last blog entry touched on what’s been learned about elevated consciousness, and later I will come back to the issue of gradual versus sudden change. For today, let’s skip ahead to consider how we can promote ‘awakening’ experiences. To cover this territory in depth would require an entire book, and many texts and even bibles have been written to help people attain transcendence. Fortunately, my intended audience limits the scope of my endeavor. My goal is to provide suggestions that people can incorporate into ongoing programs of recovery from depression and anxiety. Even at my best, I don’t believe my elevated consciousness rivals that of a true spiritual leader. All I can claim is that regret, worry and despair no longer plague me. It would make my entire stormy life worthwhile if I could help one or two people transcend their labyrinths of remorse and terror, and ascend to a new state of mind.

Probably, those most prone to benefit will be those with long histories of misery, who feel like they can’t take much more pain. It was only because my desolation had become nearly unbearable that I finally saw the light. It seems probable to me that less wretched anguish would be less likely to push one to the precipice of decisive change. Certainly, most people who have described abrupt, transformative experiences had first descended to abject despair. By this reasoning, my audience will be people with severe dysphoria, who will likely have already explored a number of different pathways to relief. Many will have undergone therapy, many will have been prescribed medication, and many will have turned to spiritual programs. Prior work is important, because I believe one needs to build a foundation before one can fashion a spire into the heights of understanding.

Coming as I did from a catastrophic childhood, one necessity was time spent sorting through the conflicts and confusion bequeathed me by the dead past. My guess is that the greater the turmoil in one’s history, the greater the need to expend effort coming to grips with it. Probably most people with life-ruining depression will have had the benefit of at least a little therapy aimed at exploring the circumstances that predisposed them to such problems. This is a bit elitist of me, I realize, since it takes financial resources to get psychotherapy in our unjust society. I am not saying that one needs to spend many years and thousands of dollars hashing over one’s upbringing, but a bit of assistance from someone knowledgeable about the lingering effects of childhood trauma seems vital.

These days, the trend in psychotherapy is toward focusing on thought and behavior in the present rather than getting bogged down by the past. Although this is a positive and empirically supported development, I suspect that those with really difficult pasts may yet need to examine what happened. Running from the past is not the same as escaping it. On the other hand, in addition to therapy that addresses childhood trauma, recovery from depression and anxiety requires major changes in how we think and act. For this reason, it is helpful to learn the techniques of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and its many spinoffs. Whether these skills are learned from books, or from therapists, it is important to recognize the fundamental role of thought in despondence. When the mind does little but cycle through hidebound regrets, worries and obsessions, mental anguish will persist, impeding the journey to higher consciousness.

Today’s post begins a discussion of how psychotherapy, self-examination and thought management provide a foundation for steps toward transcendent awareness. I’ve tried to emphasize that my comments are directed to those with severe depression and anxiety, most of whom probably have histories of both childhood trauma and negative obsessional thinking. In one way or another, the childhood needs to be looked at; if therapy is out of reach, then journaling and reading might well suffice. In addition, one must learn to discipline thoughts, and cut down on negative rumination. The next post will continue this discussion of the groundwork that facilitates a journey to an elevated frame of mind. We are fortunate to live in an age when much has been learned about the roots of misery, and about how we can prepare the field for a blossoming future.

In recent months, a plan has formed to wean myself away from the comforting bosom of therapy. A post I wrote six months ago detailed the huge amount of psychotherapy and group work I’ve completed. Some of it enlightened me, some of it led me astray, and much if it had little effect at all.

Just as I prepare to swear off therapy forever, fate has brought me a counselor who truly helps me. Partly it’s a good personality match; partly the ACT philosophy he adheres to works well for me (as discussed on this site many times); and partly I’m finally ready for a fundamental change.

Not that I’m close to ‘cured’, or even ‘stable’, but something inside seems to be shifting. One good example came in my most recent session. It was the first in almost two months, and had been arranged as an urgent appointment because of severe depression.

The biggest reason for my suffering, being perfectly blunt, has always been self-hatred. My upbringing beat it into me. My earliest memories are of my parents’ bitter divorce, during which it became obvious that my dad despised the role of father. In most of my memories of my mother, she lies in bed nearly catatonic with depression. She couldn’t offer much love. After that came her death, a probable suicide; a six-year-old takes a mother’s dying as a personal rejection. Within weeks I began living with my bitter father and sadistic stepmother. The woman humiliated and tormented me with cold, calculated efficiency. (Those interested can read about her in a memoir fragment .) My dad, narcissistic and obsessed by his work, was also an alcoholic. In short, my childhood taught me to feel unwanted, unworthy, despised, tormented, and abandoned.

Sadly, I still feel all those things, only now the hatred comes from my own heart. This is probably the most sensitive secret I’ve revealed on a site riddled with self-disclosure. It is the root of the worst of my problems. It keeps me at arms length from life and loved ones, because I never believe I deserve either.

My counselor and I have talked about this self-loathing many times. On this last visit, he instructed me to hold out my hand. “Can you love your hand?” he asked.

To my surprise, the answer was, “yes”; loving a body part seemed easy. The full significance did not sink in right away.

My adoration of biology, which goes back to my earliest days gardening and fishing with my grandfather, makes admiration of anything alive no problem at all. People, redwood trees, mice, and all other living things enthrall me. I’m even fascinated by mosquitoes. I have an inborn reverence for everything that lives. But until recently, I had never honored myself for my own biology.

For some time, I’ve practiced a meditation where I simultaneously feel and visualize my internal physiology. I sit on my meditation cushion and breathe, all the time imagining the air seeping into the tiniest passages and pockets of my lung. I think of the oxygen turning my blood corpuscles bright red. While concentrating on the sensation of my heartbeat, I form a mental picture of my heart pumping this freshened blood to the rest of my body.

Even though I regularly settle into my biological nature, it had never occurred to me to love myself as a living organism. I was too busy hating my personality, my decisions, and my sins. All my hatred has been directed at me. Which raises the question, “what am I?” Am I a disembodied mind? Can I really separate what goes on in my brain from the body that holds it? The obvious answer is “no”.

After my appointment with the therapist, I did my usual ‘biological’ meditation, only this time I honored the miracle of my animal form, and allowed reverence to surface. At the same time, I held the thought that I am my body. After all, the sensation of a mind separate from the physical self is an illusion, or even a delusion. It’s the ego’s way of isolating and empowering itself. The truth is that body and self are one. In accessing my respect for my own life processes, I discovered a bit of love for myself. It feels wonderful.

Not long ago, I thought my recent spiritual growth had banished inner darkness. Soon after, I found myself fueling a depression with my habitual self-contempt. The old obsessions, regrets, and fears returned with full force. Having learned from that relapse, and despite this insight about my value as a living animal, I will be shocked if the horrible despair does not soon resurface. On the other hand, perhaps I will remember to feel reverence toward my body, and the biological mind it supports. Perhaps I will feel a trickle of love for myself.