There is much psychological literature on sensitivity, which is no doubt familiar to many readers (see this Wikipedia article for a good summary); what follows is my poetic and non-scientific take on the subject.

Some people seem to feel life more deeply than others. Culturally determined preferences may judge high sensitivity as better or worse than its alternative, but in my opinion the trait requires no such valuation. On the other hand, those of us with systems wide open to pain and pleasure must comprehend our true nature so we can learn to function comfortably in a world that seems designed to challenge the heart.

Did you spot the lie in the last paragraph? The truly sensitive soul will never find lasting comfort save by rejecting the very quality that defines it. To feel life in the abyss of the self is inherently agitating; moments of peace will ever alternate with moments of distress. This is why exquisite sensitivity is commonly viewed as a deficiency.

Imagine for the moment a sentient God who watches our lives from on high. My position on whether such a deity exists is nuanced, complex, and changeable, but right now I don’t want to get into that tangle. Instead, just try to picture how humans would appear through the sagacious eyes of an all-knowing God. From that vantage, does the sensitive person look like he or she is lacking? Doesn’t it rather look more like the sensitive soul is the one who is paying the most attention?

Let’s face facts. Death hurts. Even birth hurts. Romance is seldom forever sweet, as most married couples can attest. Children bring joy to families, but not infrequently they also bring grief. Illness strikes us all, sooner or later. And these are just the ordinary, inevitable trials of life.

Add in earthquakes, hurricanes, famine, wildfires, and tsunamis, and you begin to feel the true impact of our dilemma. Then include the human-generated miseries of war, torture, exploitation, environmental destruction, child-abuse, racism/sexism, and so on. By this point we have before us a panorama sufficient to demoralize anyone who opens to its import. No wonder a responsive heart is often considered an infirmity.

Fortunately, there is more to life than heartache. We can appreciate the intricacy of a spider’s web, the majesty of the moon on a cloudless night, the joyous warmth of a rising sun. We can feel the heart’s faithful beating, the innocence of a child’s smiling face, the palpable waves of love in a family. We enjoy the delicate aroma of a field of wildflowers as we take a morning stroll in springtime, and we feel invigorated by the blustery swirl of leaves as we walk through a park on a windy autumn afternoon. We can meditate among granitic monoliths in the high mountains or feel lulled by waves lapping along the shore of a broad, clear lake.

The trick to embracing this infinite universe of splendor and terror is to remain, yes, sensitive to its charms.

There are two basic strategies for surviving life’s ordeals. One is to harden the outer walls and live protected from fate’s sting. The other is to open the windows wide and let the full blast enter, keeping faith that bereavement and dismay will be more than balanced by blessings and delight.

Sealing the mental house tightly shut keeps out the cold, biting winds, but also the butterflies and sunshine. Opening wide invites life’s full complement of chaos, but also its magnanimous smile.

The sensitive soul faces this choice early in life. In my own case, my upbringing felt overwhelming, so in response my young adult years became a study in progressive cynicism. By my age of twenty-five anger was the only emotion that remained easily accessible. Training as a physician completed the tempering begun years earlier; through medical education I became skilled at participating in the most affecting dramas without feeling affected.

That transformation led me to many of my most disastrous decisions and lasting regrets. I became cut off from my ethical foundations and acted on the basis of superficial logic fueled by deep-seated angst.

How much better it would have been to leave my gentle heart on my sleeve, where it naturally wanted to perch. How much happier I’d have been following my quirky inner leadings rather than society’s call to ambition.

No matter. In the end I found my way back to my true nature. And indeed, as I mentioned in the last post it may be that this current epoch will be my ending turn on life’s wheel. Yes, I feel terribly pained by how much I may be losing before long. I feel even more sorrow about how much was lost through mistaken efforts to protect my heart from breaking. But better to return to feeling at last than never return at all.

Poets, artists, reformers, healers, and saints all rely on sensitivity. The majority probably were born into this world with giant, vulnerable hearts. Many may have lost their way for awhile. But in the end, the sensitive person can neither be happy nor effective except by allowing his or her insistent affection and exquisite tenderness free reign.

The best way to achieve this freedom is to keep the eyes open as wide as possible. Don’t close off to the pain you see, but don’t ignore the beauty of life’s spectacle either. Watch how the winds blow from all directions. Sometimes bitter Northers strafe us with ice, and sometimes balmy desert breezes blow in the darkest night. Sometimes death, sometimes birth. Sometimes cruelty, sometimes compassion. Sometimes illness, sometimes health.

Life is a circle. Live in the middle of the largest circumference you can imagine. From such an axis, no matter how much distress you feel, you will discover a greater measure of Bliss.

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.

I want to thank all of you who have been leaving kind words of condolence about my sister’s passing from this life. Such a rally of support feels really nice in this difficult time. I’ve come to know so many compassionate people through this blog, and I appreciate and feel warmed by your friendship. Blessings to you all.

Lucy (Janice's baby)

You never know how you’ll feel when a family member dies. That you’ll feel sad is obvious. But will you feel regret? Relief? Numbness? Will you even feel Joy?

When my sister died, at first I felt numb. Then remorseful. Then relieved that she did not suffer the indignity of prolonged hospitalization. Then, and most oddly, I started feeling a tiny bit joyful.

It helped that I just read Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near Death Experience, by Jeffrey Long, MD. Collated by a radiation oncologist, the book’s thesis rests on the consistency in response among hundreds of people, of many ages and cultures, who’ve had near death experiences and filled out an online survey. On the face of it, this doesn’t sound like very strong proof of afterlife, but Dr. Long builds a compelling argument and answers most skeptical objections. I can’t say the book completely convinced me, but it allows me to entertain the hope that my sister is in a better place.

There seems to be good reason to believe death more mysterious than a strict materialist stance allows. The near death experience makes it appear more subtle, more beautiful, and more hopeful than the empty blackness you’d expect if consciousness ends when the brain shuts down.

Many people who’ve experienced near death phenomena report being offered the option of returning to their bodies or departing from their lives. Obviously, they all chose to return, since they lived to tell the story. My sister ‘coded’ in the hospital. On the basis of what I just read, it could be that she was offered a choice, and decided to move on. Her life had become so constricted, it seems likely that radiant light, love, and bliss would have convinced her to leave her body for good.

Perhaps she finally found the unconditional acceptance and affection she always deserved.

Do I know this for sure? No. Do I want it to be true? Yes. Does that make me delusional? No, I think it makes me a loving brother who hopes his conflicted sister finally found peace.

You never know. I didn’t expect a sensation of joy in these early days of grief. Not that there aren’t also tears, and pain, and tremendous regret. But last night as I laid in bed unable to sleep, for a brief moment a shiver moved through my whole body followed by a powerful surge of love. It lasted only a few seconds, so that I barely had time to register the episode before it was gone. Could it have been my sister’s spirit touching me as she made the transition to the next realm? Maybe. Could it have been a momentary dream or a hypnagogic hallucination? Maybe. Either way, it healed me a little. Perhaps it was my sister, or perhaps it was an unconscious memory of my sister’s affection. But it helped.

More than anything, after Janice’s death I know this: it is pointless to criticize another person, especially a loved one. Most people are doing the best they can given their past history and present resources. I could have accepted my sister exactly as she was years ago, rather than waiting until the final months. The medical outcome would likely have been exactly the same, but my opinion of myself would be better. It would have been kinder to have always loved her unconditionally. It would have been more noble to have honored her right to make her own choices.

Unconditional acceptance is difficult. I found it hard to offer Jan that gift, though toward the end it became easier. I like to think she’s now immersed in healing currents of infinite and unconditional love.

Call me superstitious–I can take it. Why? Because I now understand that love without criticism or demand is our birth right and our death right. This means I am worthy of it, regardless of my weakness and faith in mystery. And so are others, regardless of whether or not they agree.

The past week has been unusual. On the one hand, nothing in the external universe has gone well for me. On the other, my inner state has remained remarkably stable. Sure, there have been moments of distress, but I’ve largely retained the clarity that followed my weekend spiritual retreat eight days ago. For me to stay this contented and peaceful in the face of such disappointment is almost unprecedented. It’s the direct result of my finally absorbing many important truths about human life that I’ve believed for years on a superficial level, but never before internalized.

Rather than rehashing my recent realizations, however, this post will talk about more mundane aspects of life. In the past nine months many posts have discussed my insights into our larger potential, but few have talked about the smaller center-point of this blog: Will as a person. While I hate to appear narcissistic, it’s also important to be ‘real’ in a project of this sort, and that can only happen if I’m honest about my experience. Which means talking about myself from time to time.

My acupuncture practice is not going well. It has faced so many obstacles since opening that it officially qualifies as a comedy of errors. Almost nothing has gone right.

The practice first opened in the office of a friend of mine, but within weeks personality conflicts cropped up. My friend and her office manager turned out to see things very differently from myself and my own office manager (who also happens to be my wife). Since we were the newcomers, we ended up being the ones to leave.

The second sublet seemed to be going well overall. There were some problems with cramped working quarters and frequent rearrangements of the furniture, but it all seemed manageable. Then we learned about some problems behind the scenes that make it impossible for us to stay. So we need to move again.

I had found an office suite that looked good, and we tentatively committed to a two-year lease, but I soon realized that there was too much pressure on my mind and body, so I backed out. The alarm bells were ringing too loudly. By changing my mind, I burnt an important bridge and gave up the chance to ever get into a nearby office building I like very much.

In the background through all these past months, it’s been clear to me that my neck is not appreciating this new line of work. It hurts, and the pain is bringing up bad memories of my last days as a surgeon. Back then, I ignored the pain, pushed it out of mind, and forced my body to work despite its complaints. Eventually, my system rebelled and I broke down: physically first, then mentally. Now, in this current saga, the pattern is threatening to repeat.

The hardest fact I face is my limitation. My body will not allow me to push it like before. And whenever the stress builds, I begin to see signs of mental agitation that are also problematic. If I’m not careful, my decisions become rash and my resolve wavers; I start off in one direction and then switch to another.

I’m reluctantly facing the fact that my bodymind may not permit me to realize the dream that first led me to train in acupuncture, a process that started nearly eighteen months ago. It is very difficult to look in the mirror and see a man who looks physically robust and mentally clear, when I know that my neck is fragile and my mind reacts poorly to chronic stress.

It’s hard to know when to listen to warning bells and when to ignore them and push forward. It’s hard to know when I’m caving in to self-limiting beliefs versus wisely honoring my system. Now everything has gotten very confused, with no office and no viable plan for the future.

And yet… I remain at peace with only occasional brief lapses into worry and regret. As long as I focus on what really matters, which is my relationship with life and love, I feel fine. It’s only when I obsess about the myriad problems of the acupuncture practice that I feel agitated. Similarly, as long as I take care of my body it doesn’t hurt, but when I work too long bending over patients, the pain reappears.

Such is the dilemma of spiritual life. If I resided in a monastery it would be easier to remain peaceful and saturated with bliss. But living in the real world is far more challenging. I’m finding it possible to stay centered, but it requires vigilance and frequent time out for spiritual renewal.

Which is where this post started: Despite the fact that everything is going poorly, I’m feeling reasonably peaceful. It’s taking considerable effort, but I’m succeeding at staying centered despite the escalating stress. Maybe, hopefully, this grounded state will someday sustain itself spontaneously without the need for so much vigilance. But although I hope for increasing solidity, I’m happy with how things now stand in my heart.

In any event, I’ve now opened up a bit about the details behind the essays you read here. Rest assured, I’m not planning to make talking about my problems a habit. But context is important, and the context of WillSpirit is Will. My difficulties have to come up now and then, or I’m not offering an honest description of my path to mental wellness.

In the last post I announced readiness to believe in a loving cosmic presence, which seemed reasonable to call “God.” Today, I’m uneasy with that language because of all the negative and controversial connotations of the word.

An over-riding conscious awareness in the universe no longer strikes me as impossible, and I see belief in it as a useful device whether it exists ontologically or not. The God word would be appropriate if it could be stripped of its accretions, but it has become almost hopelessly polluted. Like a once lovely meadow freighted with generations of industrial waste, “God” is a word that simply can’t be invoked as an address for something as pure and unthreatening as what’s in my heart. The loving presence I refer to has none of the judging, demanding, rigid, conceptualized, authoritarian, and implausible qualities that G-O-D language sometimes brings up in Jewish-Christian-Muslim traditions.

Although last time I admitted readiness to believe, I’m not sure that belief is even the right descriptor for my new understanding. As I explained two posts back, the experience of divine presence is real. The occurrence of what feel like spiritually enlightened states stands beyond argument, because too many people have described them. It doesn’t even matter if transcendent awareness occurs only in the brain and connects with nothing else. It happens, and that’s the key issue.

I’ve entered numinous states many times. To varying degrees these experiences make the cosmos appear permeated by: 1. Love, 2. Unity, and 3. Rightness. I’ve never felt any judgment or fear when this feeling takes hold. It is wordless, expansive, and utterly peaceful. It also feels unquestionably real and important. If you want to tell me that it’s just my brain playing tricks, I’ll grant that it could be ‘all in my head,’ but it’s no trick. It’s the healthiest frame of mind one can imagine.

So shouldn’t I, and we, aim to live in this realization more often? Why would we want anything more (or less) than to move through a universe that felt loving, connected, and fundamentally perfect? (Note that I’m ascribing perfection to the cosmos as a whole, not to that tiny droplet of chaos we know as human society. Our culture is very, very far from perfect. But our constricted and collective neurosis does not detract from the infinite beauty of all that is.) What’s shifted for me is that I’m finally open to believing that transcendent feelings don’t need to be transient; one can deliberately foster them and live with them on an ongoing basis. Sure, there will be lapses even for saints. But deep loving awareness can underpin large portions of daily life, rather than arising as occasional momentary relief from an otherwise bleak existence.

To explain this in words, and especially in a short essay, is impossible. You’ll just have to trust me that with meditative and personal work, and a 180 degree change in attitude, it is possible to find a radiant love within the self that dispels all worries about success, approval, affection, security, and so on.

When I announced in my last piece a willingness to have faith, I meant faith in the centrality of this love. I have come to accept that this principle resides in every one of us, and only needs the right approach to life to manifest itself. It is a universal value that we all know deep down, but cannot access because of the toxicity that surrounds and penetrates us, including the pollution that has nearly ruined the word God.

The normal course of every human life is to move toward this principle, though some people make very little progress while others end up deeply immersed in it. You often hear stories of nasty, hurtful personalities who transform into loving, caring servants of humanity. People rarely, if ever, change in the other direction. Furthermore, each of us is born in exactly this state as infants. You rarely, if ever, see a mean baby. Love is both our initial nature and the proper final goal of life.

So scratch the word God from the discussion. It is irrelevant in this context. Focus on the moments in your life when you felt the unity, rightness, and love that I describe. That experience is what I believe in, not some concept. My big recent shift is in recognizing that the numinous state of mind is always available, provided we let go of a lifetime of confused and delusional beliefs about what’s important. Obviously, this can be challenging, but it now appears possible. What a relief!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the abysmal depth of humanity,
Ensconced in ancient sediments,
Lies a lone and luminous pearl.
Like a niggling grain of gold,
It spurs our naked conscience,
That innocent newborn, blinking at life.

Underneath
Our encrustations of resentment,

Submerged
In our simmering magma of rage,

Struggling
Against confused currents in serpentine aquifers,

Clouded
By the muddy waters of deluded and futile dreams,

At the bottom of vertiginous desire,
That crevasse gaping at every glittering temptation,

This soft light of love
Glows in the undying heart of life
Like a firefly burning but unconsumed.
This radiant pheromone of the summer night
Calls out a warm dark sky,
Where we shine, the uncounted stars.

Despite my warning to readers in the opening paragraph of the last post, that essay’s thesis wasn’t truly challenging. Desires can lead to trouble? I hear my readers thinking: “Tell us something we don’t already know.” Consider how many novels have been written about the mayhem that surrounds those who act without restraint. A major task of growing up is learning to steady behavior rather than pursue whims. Granted, the Buddha took that basic knowledge to the next level, and showed how even subtle craving can cause suffering, but the message still sounds like common sense: unbridled wants lead to angst.

In the millennia since the Buddha imparted his teachings, these concepts have been elaborated into sophisticated recommendations for achieving equanimity. During the past fifty years, many Westerners have adopted Buddhist practices and precepts. For instance, the doctrine of non-attachment has entered common parlance.

As I have done with a number of spiritual systems, I devoted myself to Buddhist study and practice for a time. I learned the deep peacefulness that comes with following the breath during meditation. I even managed to experience my egoic personality as a mirage, as a biological process within this body’s neural structure, suspended midway between the subatomic and galactic realms.

For all the insight I gleamed from Buddhist practice, however, the idea of non-attachment always remained a bit troubling. Sure, it works fine if applied to material or fleeting pleasures like cars, chocolate, or love affairs. The transient pleasures of life cannot be sustained, and chasing thrills is a doomed strategy for happiness. But what about genuine, deep-seated, love? How can non-attachment make sense when we speak of those closest to us?

For once, I don’t have an answer here. In theory, we could love with all our depth while a person is with us, then calmly let go when he or she departs to the next plane. But even Buddhists grieve, right? And isn’t grief the necessary and worthy price of love?

Denial is a powerful tool of the mind. Even when we know better, we block out awareness of the inevitable death of those we hold dear. To dwell on mortality seems to serve little purpose, so we avoid looking at it. My father was hospitalized with ominous medical problems a year before he died, but when I got the dreadful phone notification of his passing, it still came as a shock. I should have known better, but I didn’t want to. My bond to him, despite our many conflicts, was too important for me to permit thought of sunder. In his case I was strongly attached, and I don’t regret it. But I do regret not taking better advantage of my dad’s final year. My fear of loss fueled a denial that tricked me into squandering time with my father.

Keeping a loose grip is fine, and not that hard, when pleasures are only of the senses. But when they have deeper roots, and touch the heart and soul, holding lightly becomes far more challenging. And is it even desirable?

Do we really want to remain non-attached to those around us? Are not the joy and pain of love and loss vital experiences in life? Where do we draw the line between the pleasures we should release, and the ones that sustain our humanity?

Guess what? We’re back in the realm of hardship. We so quickly slip from joy into pain. The hardship of losing those we love is one of those ordeals that can expand and teach us. But getting to that enlarged and wise state requires that we embrace the pain of grief, and at the same time release our grip on the departed. Only then can we experience the timeless alchemy of tragedy and grace.

So how to sum up non-attachment in matters of the deeper heart? It comes down to cherishing every moment with those we love. We recognize the fleeting nature of all our relationships, and the inevitable breaking of all attachments. As painful as loss is to contemplate, we accept that we our bonds of affection will be disrupted at the end of every life. We guide our hearts by this truth of transience, while keeping our minds in the present, focused on those dear to us. Attachment to the ones alive, sweet letting go of those deceased.

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.