Recent posts have alluded to the ‘awakening’ I experienced during the middle part of January. Perhaps you have noticed that details have been slow in coming. The episode had such impact, and seemed so special, that I’ve wanted to savor and assimilate it before taking the risk of describing it badly. How could I possibly do it justice? If it is not entirely beyond words, it will certainly be reduced by them. So please forgive the hesitance with which I am spelling it out.

Not only do I have trouble describing what happened, I can’t even categorize it properly. In terms of emotional impact, it had much in common with the ‘psychosis’ that overwhelmed my mind in 2000. At that time, my universe came alive with divine forces and holy beings. Afterwards, everyone around me suffered through long descriptions of what I called ‘my religious visions’. Because the amazing sights, sounds, and feelings had seemed to be the handiwork of supernatural agencies, I believed them ‘spiritual’ in every sense of the word. What happened this January had the same emotional impact, but the causes seemed different. Whereas before I heard holy voices and met divine spirits, this time nothing supernatural seemed to be at play. I felt a profound connection with my surroundings, and enjoyed a penetrating clarity about my true condition as a human being. But I did not hear, feel, or see any gods or angels. My thinking did not go in that direction at all.

So was this experience ‘spiritual’, or not? Consider that it: 1) made me exquisitely aware of the profuse (and unarguable) connections between all life forms; 2) showed me my insignificance in the face of a vast and mysterious cosmos; 3) helped me recognize that the universe is perfect in its own way; and 4) reminded me of what a privilege it is to be a witness. Because I felt both humbled and absorbed by the cosmos, and because the universe struck me as exactly ‘right’, the episode counts as an awakening. And yet everything that I saw and felt, or that comforted me, came from either scientific knowledge or day-to-day experience. Whatever happened cannot be labelled ‘secular’, because it felt so numinous. But it did not seem supernatural, either. Can it be called ‘spiritual’ if it did not involve ‘spirits’?

My awakening can be described as a ‘sacred’ experience, even if it was not a strictly spiritual one. Although dictionary definitions of ‘sacred’ mostly relate to ‘God or gods’, there is also the meaning: ‘highly valued or important’. In that sense, I found myself recognizing how we inhabit a sacred universe, where every particle holds tremendous significance. Which, if you think about it, is not much of a stretch. For the simplest example, isn’t it spectacular that protons exist? And that they comprise even smaller particles called quarks, which evidently contain even smaller things of some sort (strings?). With my awakened state of mind, these momentous truths almost overwhelmed me. I was awestruck by the enormity of my surroundings, and yet I felt both absorbed and supported by them. The universe was not somehow separate from ‘me’, and I could find no objective boundary between the outside world and my inner mind. I also had absolute confidence that there are no flaws in the cosmos. Everything is as it must be. Although the reality of tragedy remained quite clear, I saw that in the larger scheme of things, it is unavoidable. Hardship is inseparable from life. In short, I knew the universe to be profound, one with me, and perfect.

Later, as the impact of this experience hit home, I found an entirely new attitude toward life. No longer obsessed with my small inner concerns, I now have much more appreciation of the larger, outer world. My depression and anxiety have lightened to the point where they hardly deserve those names any longer. Not that I feel giddy or supremely ‘happy’. An undertone of sorrow can still be heard anytime I slow down and listen. But it is a special kind of sadness, with an almost inexpressible, sorrowful majesty. Everything in this universe, including my depression, holds beauty of one kind or another.

Not only was my experience ‘sacred’, therefore, it was also transformative. After years of very slow and incremental change, I found myself leaping over barriers that had seemed insurmountable and permanent just a week earlier. My mental health jumped to a new plateau. There is room for a great deal more growth and maturity, of course, but I made more progress in January than in the entire decade between 2000 and 2010.

Having been granted a sacred, transformative awakening that followed specific actions and contemplations, I suspect that something in my experience might assist others. My first obligation, and the one way I might be able to help, is to write.

Somewhere ‘out there’ sits the cosmos. It consists of things we call ‘matter’ and ‘energy’. External to our minds, substances and forces move, fluctuate, and interact. We have good scientific descriptions of how this works, but we don’t experience it directly. All we have access to are the patterns of nerve signals that enter our brains by way of nerves. These nerve signals come from complex sense organs such as eyes and ears. They also arrive from scattered sensory cells (in our skin, organs, and tendons) that provide our sensations of touch, bodily condition, and movement.

It takes effort, but try for a moment to fully acknowledge these facts about the separation between the mind and the physical world. Scientists and philosophers debate about the nature of the ‘self’ that makes use of incoming data. But even without understanding the ‘self’, it is helpful to grasp that our minds depend on sense organs for contact with the universe. Sensory systems are the windows through which we view our lives.

These concepts can be used to improve mental comfort. As a personal example, the teeth in my upper jaw sometimes throb, probably because of jaw clenching. But for some reason, my lower teeth feel fine. So here’s where I get to choose my world: in my mind, I can either attend to the upper molars, or the lower ones. It used to seem like the aching was outside my control; it shouldered its way into my consciousness. Not that the pain was awful, life disrupting agony. The discomfort meant little more than annoyance. But whether I wanted to suffer with it or not seemed irrelevant.

A few days ago, I remembered something taught in chronic pain classes. Rather than paying attention to the upper teeth, I shifted my focus to the lower ones. Very quickly the toothache abated. Discomfort persisted, but without me centering on it, its intensity died. I’m not talking about pushing sensation away, only about shifting attention.

I hope this example makes clear how readily we can alter experience by attending to different sensory input, such as lower jaw versus upper. Or we could look at the flowers on the roadside rather than the litter. What’s more, we can use selective attention in other ways: we can turn toward pleasant memories, and create helpful thoughts. Recently, in the midst of one of my depressions, I listened to a friend’s advice to remember happy times when feeling sad. Naturally, it seemed like the facile suggestion of someone never tormented with true despair. But he did have a point. Just as we can choose which tooth to listen to, we can select which memories to replay in our heads. Similarly, we can decide whether to dwell on our fears, or imagine our dreams for the future.

Sound familiar? These days, most people treated for mood disorders learn about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It’s been proven to help people who suffer from anxiety and depression. It teaches how to steer the mind away from troubling waters. The goal isn’t to live in denial or avoid problem-solving. But why dwell on situations we cannot change, or worry about stuff that we can’t prevent, and that hasn’t happened.?

Many religions promote mental discipline. Buddhism literally makes a science of it. But spirituality is not required to gain the benefit of self-guidance. There are many books that teach CBT, and the idea of ‘positive thinking’ has been written about for at least a hundred years. My goal in this note is to give the perspective that humans exist in biological structures of unthinkable complexity, and that consciousness (whatever it really is) can direct inner experience. Gentle tuning of attention and thought can aid our perpetual search for peace. Rather than succumbing to the dreaded ‘bipolar’ label, or suffering hopelessly with the onus of ‘depression’, we can begin to take charge of our interior worlds.

Obviously, these techniques by themselves will not resolve severe mood crises. Much can be written about how to gain the self-love necessary to embrace strategies that promote contentment. But recognizing the distinction between inner world and outer reality is a useful step on the path toward ease of mind.