WillSpirit!

Where Will meets Spirit
∞ Love, Clarity, Balance, Peace, & Bliss ∞

A science, mental health and spirituality blog written by a physician.








  • Red_Exclamation_DotDisclaimer
    • Dear Visitors:
      Although I trained and practiced as a physician, my background does not include formal instruction in psychiatry beyond basic medical education. This journal presents ideas about treatment philosophy, but must not be considered therapeutic advice. Abrupt changes in one's psychiatric medications can trigger profound cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Consequently, pharmaceutical agents should not be increased or decreased without supervision by a mental health clinician.

    • ON THE OTHER HAND, your brain belongs to you, and your opinion counts. If you decide that changing your medication regimen will serve your best interest, then I believe your providers have an obligation to help you try to achieve your goals. I want everyone to be educated about their options, and do what will be most helpful for themselves. No one should feel pushed around by dogmatic and/or limited viewpoints, whether those of psychiatrists, anti-psychiatry advocates, or myself.


Shelter from the Storm

“When it rains, it pours.” Isn’t that what they say when problems accumulate? Less than 24 hours after getting home from the hospital, I received a call from the disability insurance company that sends me a check every month. During my years as a surgeon I paid into this policy so that if the unthinkable occurred, and illness affected my income, financial protection would be assured.

For many years the company has paid me enough to sustain a middle class lifestyle. I don’t have the wealth that went with active surgical work, but my wife and I have been comfortable. However, for several months the company has been working to eject me from their rolls, and yesterday they announced me capable of earning enough money as a ‘physician consultant’ to no longer qualify for benefits.

Looking online, I see that most such consultant positions are filled by by board certified doctors practicing in their specialty. My board credentials lapsed a decade ago and cannot be renewed because I no longer see patients in that specialty. The insurance company claims I can make 80% of my former income (adjusted for inflation) by finding one of these unattainable jobs. According to them, they don’t have to prove that I could actually be hired for one, only that somewhere, someone has a position that pays in that range. I highly doubt anyone with my qualifications can make the requisite amount as a ‘consultant,’ but none of this seems to matter to those who hold the purse strings.

Luckily, I’ve been in contact with a very skilled attorney who works in this field, and who seems determined to help me. But I’m feeling tremendous fear around all this. As I try to recuperate from my major medical meltdown, I really don’t appreciate being hit with mounting stress and more scary problems.

The fact that I managed to wean myself off all the toxic psychiatric medications seems to work against me. Apparently one is required to ingest the ineffective neurotoxins sold by Big Pharma in order to qualify as having bona fide psychological instability and limitations.

Granted, I write here often about how the mental illness model seems wrong to me, and how I believe my mind capable of much more than the doctors used to offer me in way of expectation. But that doesn’t mean I could tolerate working full-time in a highly stressful job (rejecting insurance claims?) without suffering from depression and agitation that would sooner or later make the work impossible for me. And that’s not even taking into account how poorly my neck and back would tolerate 40 hours a week at a computer.

I’m not looking for handouts. I only want my benefits to continue, the same ones I paid into for many years to prevent just this sort of looming financial catastrophe.

Oh well. Right now there is nothing to do but wait. The insurance company can’t take action against me until I heal from the bleeding, aneurysm, and vascular abnormalities in my abdomen. There will be the option of a lawsuit if they try to cut me off. As in all legal maneuvering, one’s best weapon is patience.

In response to this new stress, I’m trying to meditate even more than usual. I bring my consciousness away from my head with all its worrisome thoughts and center it in my heart. From that vantage, the fears feel more distant. This practice also brings me closer to the disease process around my intestine and pancreas, which is where my healing energies need to be focused anyway. The financial issues will play out one way or the other. Maybe a big change in lifestyle looms, or maybe not. But for now I gravitate toward that gentle but potent cantor of love in my heart, and rest in its strong arms. From this safe, central, vantage I feel my body working to recover from its recent breakdown. And I enjoy distance from all my worries.

Now I understand better than before how to weather hardship with the right mental attitude and skillful strategies. There will be logistical battles to fight as time goes on, but when I can do nothing concrete to help my situation, I will keep meditating, keep loving, and keep learning. I will seek peace deep within, below the surface layers of storm and turmoil, where affection and grace reside.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

Shelter from the Storm was published on February 7th, 2012 . 3 comments






The Highly Sensitive Soul

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.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

The Highly Sensitive Soul was published on January 23rd, 2012 . 11 comments






My Beginner’s Mind

This entry is my twenty-fourth in November. With its publication, there will be precisely three hundred essays on the blog queue. With that many posts available, I feel comfortable planning a break in my blogging. For the month of December, if anything gets published at all, it will be poetry. My plan is to start penning essays again next year. I wish all my WillSpirit friends a Happy Holiday Season.

My final essay for 2011 offers concrete suggestions for quelling emotional distress. Many readers know more about mental healing than I do, so what follows may sound elementary. But some visitors are just starting out, and these suggestions can guide their initial steps. Besides, even advanced meditators don’t consider themselves experts, but strive to maintain the Beginner’s Mind. So one is never too experienced to practice the basics. What follows maps not just what I did when first embarking on recovery; it sketches how I continue to approach my life.

My most uplifted posts have sung the praises of meditation and right attitude. With the aid of such skills, my mental life has improved so dramatically that I now question the many diagnoses that were tossed my direction by doctors. Decisive recovery from longstanding problems shows the capacity of the mind to rework itself; resolution of symptoms also seriously challenges the “brain disease” hypothesis of mood disorders. There was plenty of cognitive detritus obstructing my path, but I doubt there was ever any organic problem in my synapses. By clearing out misconceptions and misperceptions, I found clarity and readiness to accept whatever happens in life. I am not immune to grief and disappointment, but I believe myself resistant to despair. Meditation succeeded where medication failed.

To see how dramatically I’ve improved, consider that my mother committed suicide when I was in the first grade. By late adolescence it seemed obvious to me that my own life would end the same way. It was merely a question of timing. How long would I put up with my awful heartache before deciding, in the words of Hamlet, “to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them?”

Despite years of thinking along those lines, my mind no longer attacks itself. By studying the errors in my perceptions and beliefs, by learning to not mistake feelings for reality or thoughts for truth, I have found freedom from such negativity. It now seems inconceivable that any emotion or circumstance could drive me to end my life.

This all sounds promising, I hope. It should offer reassurance to those who wonder if they could ever wake up from the nightmare of chronic severe depression. It can be done, I promise.

But how? If one is stuck in the depths of misery, the idea of meditating out of it probably sounds like an impossible dream. And early on observing the mind may actually increase awareness of emotional pain and cognitive obsession, which can seem like exactly the wrong result. The trick, in my opinion, is to start out with very small goals.

Don’t begin by signing up for a ten-day meditation retreat. Don’t even plan on sitting on a cushion for an hour. Rather, the next time you’re stuck in a waiting room or standing in line, pay attention to how you feel. Explore your sensations. Can you detect your heartbeat? Where do you find pain? Are you breathing or holding your breath? Get in the habit of checking in for a minute or two whenever there’s a lull in the action.

When you feel ready for more, adopt the same practice as you fall asleep. Take a brief break from reviewing and planning to feel your bodily sensations. Indulge in some slow, deep breaths. See how long you can focus on your body before your thoughts start churning again. Early on, you’ll be doing well if you can remain attentive for fifteen seconds. Be proud if you can achieve that.

Over time, you will extend your range. Maybe you will gaze inwardly a bit longer. Maybe you will catch an obsession and halt it. Every time you succeed, recognize your ability to steer your mental state, even if only briefly. The goal is to gain mastery over your mind, but this process takes years and is never completed, except by Buddhas. At first, consider yourself a champion if you can subdue a destructive thought long enough to choose a healthier one. As you gain skill, you’ll begin to desire more time for meditation. That’s when you should consider a retreat.

But don’t expect too much too soon. If at first you find it too painful to watch and feel, steer your mind toward pleasant memories or daydreams. This isn’t meditation as we usually define it, but it does involve guiding thoughts, so it can be very helpful. Such practice provides welcome breaks from inner misery. If you feel ambitious, you can use it to build up empowering visualizations. Paint a mental picture of yourself mastering a valued skill, or being generous to others, or feeling well and happy.

From just these brief suggestions, you can see there exist many ways to train the mind, and it can be fun experimenting with different methods. Check books out of the library, search for videos on the internet, or go to local gatherings (which often ask only for voluntary donations). If you have a religious faith, and if you feel comfortable in it, then it is a good idea to get more involved with whatever meditative or prayerful activities it offers.

I like to divide mental training into two explorations, though more knowledgeable students recognize many more categories. But for simplicity’s sake, just consider these two paths:

  1. A person can meditate to explore the ocean of consciousness by being mindful of the body, by observing thoughts, by focusing on feelings, by quieting mental activity, and so on.
  2. Alternatively, one can meditate to connect with cosmic love by centering on the warmth that emanates from the heart, by repeating sacred mantras, through visualizations, by attending spiritual rituals, etc.

I believe it is important for people who feel depressed to do both. Exploring the mind helps one learn to steer thoughts and not act on feelings. Nurturing love in the heart warms the inner child who feels lonely and unwanted. One does not need to believe in a Divine Being to find such comfort; just awakening to the affection that arises when holding beloved pets or watching children can accomplish the same end. But, of course, belief in a loving cosmic presence is a great way to find support if your philosophical prejudices will allow it.

Keep in mind as you work on meditating that other healthful activities remain vital. Exercise, good nutrition, socialization, creative arts, and compassionate acts all help improve mood and outlook. These days we can choose from a wide array of therapies and somatic practices that aid mental healing. Pursue as many avenues as you can to help yourself improve. Applaud yourself for every victory, but also treat yourself with tenderness. When you feel too depleted to do much of anything, accept your need for contraction and isolation. Compliment yourself for sitting up in bed, if that’s all you can manage. Eventually, when your energy improves, you can do more.

At all times, be aware that the aim is incremental improvement, not sudden sainthood. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “seek progress, not perfection.”

Good luck on your journey. My prayers are with you.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

My Beginner’s Mind was published on November 28th, 2011 .






The Ins & Outs of Mental Health

This a science, mental health, and spirituality blog. It says so right in the site’s header, so it must be true. Yet before now I’ve never explicitly linked the three.

Science is an analytic system that describes the world on the basis of observation, theory, and experiment. Spirituality is also based on observing, theorizing, and testing. In the former case we use physical instruments to query the external, material world; in the latter we use meditation to explore the interior space of mind.

Science would claim that mind is purely explainable on the basis of matter; religion would disagree. But for the moment let’s accept the claim that mind is a product of matter, with the proviso that we consider the shadowy quantum realm in the equation. With that step, matter contains enough ‘magic’ to account for the experiences of mystics and saints. (This is a controversial point that I’ve addressed in this earlier post, among many others.)

With this as our basis, we now recognize two legitimate modes for investigating mental life. Science looks at mind from the outside, whereas meditation looks from within. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. Although the book I mentioned last time (A Universe of Consciousness, by Edelman and Tononi), dismisses the introspective approach at the outset, this seems to me shortsighted. Fortunately, many other experts understand the value of combining interior exploration with exterior experimentation. The Dalai Lama regularly convenes gatherings of meditators and open-minded neuroscientists in order to dovetail the vast knowledge banks possessed by the two camps.

Last time I attributed the saltatory nature of personal growth to competing neural circuits. This shows how the scientific method can help us negotiate freedom from mental distress. But numerous other essays have drawn on my personal explorations of inner space through meditation. Mental health really does connect with both science and spirituality.

Why do I bother to write a whole post about this rather obvious fact? Because we are witnessing a revolution in mental health care that owes its genesis to the merging of the two realms. The best psychotherapists now stress the importance of spirituality, while the faithful increasingly turn to science to better understand human distress.

Our culture did not invent psychiatric turmoil; since the dawn of humanity people have endured pain and sorrow. And since all distress is experienced in the mind (even physical pain is mediated by the brain), all suffering can be considered a form of mental illness. The Buddha grappled with this dilemma twenty-five centuries ago, and Hindu sages worked on it even earlier. These traditions explain the workings of the mind in great detail, and also suggest how we can restructure mental processes to reduce psychic discomfort. Significantly, modern neuroscience shows layering within brain processes that is consistent with Eastern views, providing evidence that the two methods truly do investigate the same phenomena from different sides.

Combining interior knowledge with scientific understanding promises potent solutions for the pains of life. By merging science and spirituality, the mental health world is on the verge of decisively answering many psychiatric problems. My hope is that the historical antagonism between materialist and spiritualist views will not delay this welcome trend.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

The Ins & Outs of Mental Health was published on November 26th, 2011 . 3 comments






Mental Power vs Mental Distress

Two posts ago I announced a moment of victory in my long battle with insomnia. Without meaning to, I had settled my body into sleep despite continuing mental activity. Upon recognizing this unusual state of being, I took the next step and endeavored to start dreaming. Reconstructing a remembered dream from another time, I rebuilt the landscape and evoked the emotional tone of the reverie. This succeeded in sending my mind into a deeper stage of sleep: I dreamt.

Although this development excited me, I did not for a moment believe my problem solved. I welcomed the new insight, the improved control of consciousness, but expected no permanent end to insomnia.

And yet…

Two nights have passed since the one described in the earlier essay. The first went by per usual: I could only manage about two hours asleep. Happily, last night went better. Although I did not experience the sleeping body/waking mind state, I employed the earlier night’s trick of deliberately formulating a dreamscape in my mind’s eye. Combined with the deep relaxation of a meditative ‘body scan’ this sufficed to put me to sleep and stimulate dreaming.

For the second time in a week, I enjoyed five hours of fairly solid slumber. This teaches me that my ability to induce sleep is greater than suspected. Through intentional relaxation and dreamlike visualization, I can choose to synchronize my brain waves and relax into normal sleep.

This development fills me with hope, but not just because I anticipate sleeping better. It demonstrates conclusively the power of mind. If through fairly simple mental tricks I can resolve such stubborn insomnia, then it must be possible to overcome almost any mental affliction with motivation and the right kind of effort. Not only that, but this strategy incurs neither side effects, addiction, nor expense. So much healthier than the pharmaceutical bandaids that cost money, cause harm, and help only briefly.

We need to nudge the mental health system toward more emphasis on skills and less reliance on pills. This isn’t a new realization. After all, therapists have focused on reshaping mental activity since the dawn of cognitive behavioral therapy. The difference is that in addition to teaching healthier thoughts, we need to teach the healthfulness of less thought. Imagine how those who now haunt mental health clinics, with little hope of decisive change, could benefit from intensive meditation.

Progressive clinics offer introductory mindfulness meditation instruction, which is a good first step. However, my recent experiences convince me we could go much further. We could train ordinary sufferers to master their minds. There is no need to fly to India or study under a renowned guru; the skills come automatically with sufficient practice. If we publicize its transformative power, those who feel fully sick of their problems will be motivated to learn deep meditation.

I’m not suggesting meditative practice as a cure-all. There will still be need for insight about childhood trauma, relationships, and personal values. But these should be natural add-ons to a meditative practice, and not the central goals. Eastern traditions have long spoken of the power of well-trained minds. Thought, desire, and action can be mastered. Those who are willing to devote the time and effort can harness their own psychic reserves to resolve longstanding neuroses.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

Mental Power vs Mental Distress was published on November 20th, 2011 . 6 comments






Pity the Deluded Psychiatrist?

Duane Sherry, an online friend, frequent commentator, and creator of the valuable site Discover and Recover, alerted me to a discussion sparked by a comment of mine on another site. The blogger who wrote in response to my story calls himself 1 Boring Old Man, and is a psychiatrist who criticizes his field.

My contribution was nothing more than the saga regular readers here already know: after neck disease ended my surgical career, I suffered major mental health problems and then even worse difficulties caused by psychiatric drugs.

These days I don’t write so much about psychopharmaceuticals, their marketing, or their toxicity. But in the past these topics occupied many blog posts. Even so, I’ve never been much of an anti-psychiatry activist.

There are reasons for my low profile in this debate. For one thing, I’m more interested in highlighting tools that can help us safely achieve mental wellness than in dwelling on treatments that can’t. More important in the present context is the fact that justifiable anger about psychiatric drugs too often gets expressed as attacks on psychiatrists. Such contempt, bordering on hatred, sounds to me both unhealthy and unproductive. Some of the responses to the 1 Boring Old Man discussion remind me of this troubling trend.

Maybe such language bothers me because I’m a physician myself. Even though I no longer practice Western medicine (I administer acupuncture to alleviate emotional and physical pain), I spent many years among conventional doctors and learned to understand them. There is no denying they can be arrogant and insensitive, but most started their careers with the best of intentions and strong callings to help. Psychiatrists of my era were trained during a period of great optimism about brain science. Although it was relatively new at the time, the assumption that mental conditions were due to diseased nervous systems (as opposed to unconscious conflict or problematic upbringing) was unquestioned in residency programs. Drugs given for psychiatric problems often conferred dramatic short term benefit. When first administered (before the side effects accumulated), they looked like miracle cures.

And of course there was the tsunami of pharmaceutical marketing, which promised a revolution in mental health care based on what looked like impressive research. To give you a sense of the naivety common among doctors, take a closer look at my own case. When I started taking potent psychiatric drugs and was confronted with lengthy warning labels, I refused to read them. I assumed the medications wouldn’t be allowed to reach market if they weren’t proven effective and basically safe. It seems so stupid in retrospect, but my training instilled in me solid faith in the medical system. It was only as I became obese, mentally clouded, hormonally impaired, sexually dysfunctional, and diabetic that my trust began to waver.

These complications were happening in my own body, not someone else’s, so they hit home in a powerful way. To the average psychiatrist, watching patients develop such side effects may have been troubling, but rather easy to write off since the suffering wasn’t personal. Yes, doctors should have been more compassionate, but they believed the drugs essential to wellbeing. The accepted wisdom was that mental disorders were so awful that bodily deterioration represented a reasonable trade-off.

My goal here isn’t to make excuses, but to point out that psychiatrists are human like everyone else. They are just as susceptible to delusions as are their patients. Like all of us, they can easily blind themselves to what Al Gore would call inconvenient truths.

They should change. They must. But my goal is to help us all find reliable paths toward health. To promote better methods, we must publicize the fact that medications are dangerous and ultimately ineffective. But the people who most need to hear such information are the psychiatrists, and they won’t listen if they hear hatred.

Although to speak out and agitate for change is vital, accusing psychiatrists of being soulless monsters is both wrong and counterproductive. Doctors are far more likely to change if their critics look rational, open-minded, and kind than if they sound unreasonable and blinded by anger. If psychiatrists hear venomous attacks rather than reasonable appeals, they will simply harden their views. That is human nature.

The real monster in this story is capitalism. In my opinion it’s nearly always an evil, but it’s especially destructive when serving as the driving force behind health care. The inevitable result of developing psychiatric treatments with a market mentality is that profit becomes the over-riding value: not healing, not safety, not compassion, but the bottom line.

The capitalist system, the governments that serve it, and the health care systems developed by it, have been built by people but are not people. Let us direct our contempt at the structures directly responsible for harm, and then help those trapped and deluded by capitalist values and marketing learn the error of their ways. This means speaking the truth firmly and loudly, but also rationally and calmly. It means minimizing accusations about past behavior (although we must be clear about the historical facts that led to the current disaster in undermined mental health care), and concentrating on gathering support for future improvement.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

Pity the Deluded Psychiatrist? was published on November 14th, 2011 . 9 comments






The Road to Hell Is Paved with Desire

At long last I’m reading the Bhagavad Gita. This classic Hindu text has been suggested to me many times, but I’ve never picked it up before. Although I’ve long felt familiar with its themes through various lectures and reviews, there’s nothing like actually working with the book itself.

For one thing, it shows me how much of Buddhist philosophy was built on Hindu principles. “Krishna” teaches about human afflictions and their mastery with meditative practice in language that sounds quite similar to the Buddha’s. For some reason, reading the Gita is helping me absorb some important truths that I’ve resisted before now, despite having heard them in Buddhist contexts for years.

The Buddha spoke of desire, anger, and ignorance as the major obstacles to realization. The Gita brings up the same three afflictions and identifies their close relationship. It explicitly points out that anger is the natural outcome of desire, which after all gets thwarted more often than satisfied. Psychologists studying infants have found that at the earliest ages of human life a baby will display what looks like anger if you keep him or her from reaching an enticing toy. And so it goes throughout life: we become angry, even enraged, when the world prevents us from enjoying what we want.

We want respect and the world ignores us; we get mad. We want love and our partner seems distracted; we get mad. We want money and financial institutions drain the system dry; we get mad.

If we never wanted the respect, love, and money in the first place, we’d sidestep a lot of frustration.

The connection between anger and desire seems clear, but the ultimate source of misery is ignorance. We mistakenly believe we can create happiness by getting everything to work out the way we want. Once we find a satisfying relationship, a spacious home, an exciting job, financial security, a happy family, good friends, and worldly recognition, we’ll finally settle down and enjoy living. Problem is, we can seldom get all those planets to line up and stay in place. One or another of our precious spheres will inevitably wobble, gyrate, or escape us completely.

So a life driven by desires is doomed to feel unsatisfying. The world simply does not feed our every whim. And even when a hunger gets sated, the nagging feeling of want returns before long. Seeking happiness by following desires leads to frustration, not happiness.

We should remember that desire can make us ache for many things, material, interpersonal, and philosophical: for possessions, for food, for sex, for love, for power, for conformity, for freedom, for politeness, for justice, for equality, for safety, for health, etc., etc. Some of these hungers are more ethically defensible than others, but the world cannot be expected to consistently satisfy any of them. The failure to recognize this inescapable truth is the base ignorance that underlies most of the world’s problems.

This is all spelled out clearly and poetically in the Gita. It especially resonates with me right now because of my recent inner conflict about writing a book. The main motivation for that project was a need for recognition, not a calling to help others. Both aspects were at work in my psyche, but the egoistic hunger for accomplishment was dominant. I was being driven by desire.

This wish for approval runs very deep in me. As a schoolchild I was often complimented on my intelligence. In college and graduate school, professors continued the flattery. Even though I had few friends, I could always use my supposed intelligence to bolster my self-esteem. But the accolades placed expectations on me that I internalized over time. I began to desire greatness.

One world-renowned surgeon signed a personal note in a copy of his book predicting that my accomplishments would eventually eclipse his career. Very heady praise that now sounds rather poignant, seeing how my climb toward success first stalled and then became a tailspin.

I wanted very much to be a recognized authority, to be acclaimed as brilliant. It was a desire that drove me into fields that promised status but not satisfaction. It kept me from following my truer calling, from finding my essential bliss. It was not my friend.

Desire never is a friend of the soul. It is an outgrowth of animal hunger and the shiny bauble of human ego. It leads to endless cycles of craving, transient fulfillment, and recrudescent craving. It is the engine of addiction and the wellspring of hell.

Of course, recognizing desire’s toxicity doesn’t make it go away. That requires lots of meditative work and deep introspection. It takes time and commitment. I have a long way to go down that road but today, with the words of the Bhagavad Gita ringing in my mind, it seems like I might just find true freedom someday.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Desire was published on October 31st, 2011 . 4 comments






A Dance of DNA, History, and Soul

The following post is my next installment in a writing project that began on 20 October. Although it stands on its own as an essay, you can view it in context if you work forward from the first entry in the series.

The next step in this series is to start talking about my upbringing and why it led to problems with mood instability. This shifts the focus from viewing the general picture to looking at a particular case. And yet, what follows is not just my story, but every story. The details differ, but we all have suffered good and bad times, we’ve all been hurt, and we’ve all learned from experience. We’ve also all developed in a womb and we face the same end. In truth, the differences are far less impressive than the similarities. Keep that in mind while reading my unique personal history, and pay attention to how my particular trajectory reflects the human condition as we all live it.

At the outset of this writing project I said this story would start at the beginning. So let’s go right back to my first moment: that of conception. I don’t mean to raise the abortion debate here, so understand that my point isn’t necessarily that my soul manifested at the exact instant a minuscule, writhing spermatozoon from my dad penetrated the massive, nutrient packed ovum produced by my mom. But until then, the universe had never before seen that precise combination of genetic and epigenetic information gathered in a single cell. At that moment, a goodly portion of my fate was sealed.

The moodiness so common in my mother’s family (as well as her artistic sensibilities) and the alcoholism so common among my father’s relations (as well is his analytical prowess) were carried forward to me in that mix of DNA. But just how moody, artistic, alcoholic, or analytical I became remained to be shaped by time and circumstance.

As the fertilized egg divided, then divided again, as it grew into a solid ball of cells in those first few hours and days, it was affected by the chemical mix of my mother’s fluids. Her hormones and cellular messages affected my rapidly expanding mass of protoplasm. By the time I implanted in her uterine wall and the love affair of blood vessels known as a placenta formed, I’d already tapped many sources of information not present at conception. As I developed in her uterus, my little growing body continued to be affected by myriad substances, sounds, and motions. Her breathing and heart rate formed the universe of my mood at that time. If she felt worried and depressed, I shivered in my dark, watery world. If she laughed with ecstatic delight, I shimmied with pleasure.

And if she took a medication, which was commonly done by pregnant women in those days, I took it too. If pesticides entered her bloodstream, they entered mine. When she smoked or drank, I felt the rush of nicotine or the loosening of alcohol. If she walked near the exhaust of an automobile, the fumes from leaded gasoline entered her lungs and moments later a heavy metal circulated through my nervous system as it produced millions of vulnerable growing cells each hour.

At the same time, the thousands of genes on my DNA molecules were orchestrating my formation. My sex, coloration, facial features, and internal arrangements were laid down. I took the form of a European male baby because I carried European genes and a Y chromosome. It is likely that brain structures were genetically shaped in ways that determined many personality traits: my introversion, my sensitivity, maybe even my seriousness.

And yet all these genetic traits were modified at every moment by countless influences from outside. The genes were painting my portrait using pigments acquired from the environment.

Did a separate soul enter at some point? Did a consciousness already familiar with birth and death take residence in that little baby growing inside a moody woman in 1958? Do we play this game of life over and over as reincarnationists believe? It isn’t possible to be sure. I’ve read the evidence that supports the concept and find it intriguing but not quite decisive. The jury is out. But there is little doubt that the person who I became differs in important ways from everyone else in my family, even as we also share many traits. Whence the source of that uniqueness? Genes? Environment? Prior lives? The touch of God?

All I know for sure is that the day came when my mother’s womb decided my time had come, and uterine contractions pushed me into the waiting world. For better or worse, my qualities were already guiding me down my own unique path. Even at that early stage I was already the product of both my genes and the emotional and chemical milieu which formed me, which nurtured me as I grew from a single cell into a lively baby in just nine months.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

A Dance of DNA, History, and Soul was published on October 23rd, 2011 .






Preface to a Trail Guide for Mental Wellness

My last post announced my plan to change my blogging tactics. My hope is to write a book in serial form using this site, and the following essay is the first installment. I hope my small audience will find the essays helpful and interesting. I’d welcome constructive criticism along the way. The comments many of you have left in the past have persuaded me that there are at least a few people out there who like my writing and are interested in my story. You have supported my growth and my journaling more than you might guess. Thank you so very much.

Do you feel discouraged, depressed, or even suicidal at times? Do you worry about the future and obsess about past mistakes? Do you find yourself hurting the people you love? Do you feel isolated and lonely? Do you also feel intolerant of others and overly critical? Are you chronically dissatisfied? Does your life seem hopelessly off track?

If any of these sentences rings true for you, we have something in common. For years I lived in a self-constructed hell of anxiety, fear, remorse, sorrow, frustration, and sometimes rage. As decades passed, I tried to cope with my inner turmoil in different ways. As an adolescent and college student I leaned heavily on marijuana, often smoking it four times a day. During my late twenties I relied on daily alcohol and occasional cocaine. Early on I used drive and ambition to compensate for deep insecurity. Later, after suffering major setbacks and failures, I worked to build self-esteem in the absence of public acclaim. My many years of therapy dated all the way back to age sixteen, when a court ordered me into counseling. I’ve been treated by dozens of psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists. I used psychoactive medications for fifteen years and was hospitalized twice for mood disorders. After joining Alcoholics Anonymous in 1987, I gradually turned more and more toward spiritual sources of strength. I spent years studying in each of a variety of wisdom traditions, including Quakerism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism.

In the end, my psychological and spiritual work paid off, but it took me many years to find peace. Some of my therapists offered inappropriate advice that I had trouble distinguishing from the better suggestions they also provided. My atheist upbringing impeded me from embracing mystical teachings. Psychiatric medications were helpful at first, but eventually caused harm. Only after many years of study, contemplation, and meditation did I begin to break free of my rigid dysfunctional behaviors and start living more flexibly. A series of profound visionary experiences helped, although they also precipitated one my hospitalizations.

In short, it has been a difficult road, but along the way I’ve learned a lot about how to cope with mental distress. In the writing that follows I will describe the strategies that helped and also those that didn’t. I’ll suggest how one can tailor a recovery program to fit one’s personality and stage of development. Many techniques will be illustrated, but few will be treated in depth (more information is readily available in specialty publications and self-help texts). You will see how approaches like cognitive therapy, mindfulness, and acceptance practice advanced my development, but this book will not be a how-to manual. Rather, it will be a case history showing how one troubled man overcame a multitude of psychiatric problems. It’s more than a memoir but less than a self-help book. Perhaps it most resembles a trail guide to help you escape from the labyrinth of psychic misery. It explores the possible routes and the various obstacles you will encounter on your way to mental and spiritual health.

A journey of any sort begins with a single step. If we’re traveling from one physical location to another, we can estimate ahead of time how long our trip will take. Journeys of personal growth, on the other hand, may never end. Once we recognize the need to improve, we soon realize that no matter how much we tune our behavior there will always remain areas that need more work. But we can take the first step, and the next, and the next, at any time. We can move forward right here and right now. It only takes the decision to try.

This is my growing up story, the tale of my often-tentative steps on the path toward wellbeing. It will begin, as most stories must, at the beginning. It will explore the family history and childhood events that made me prone to depression, anxiety, mood swings, and anger. It will then describe how miserable and constricted my mental life became as I aged toward midlife. The bulk of the text will focus on how I slowly but steadily escaped the prison of my past and found the freedom I now enjoy.

Please keep in mind that although this book will end, my growth continues. I am healthier than before, but there is still much work to do. So this isn’t the story of a fully enlightened being, it is the tale of one who is still realizing his potential. It is a snapshot of a work in progress. I invite you to join me in retracing my steps. My sincere hope is that my example will speed the progress of others, so they can avoid the many years of unhappiness and turmoil that preceded my attainment of mental health.

Click here for the next essay in this series.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

Preface to a Trail Guide for Mental Wellness was published on October 20th, 2011 . 2 comments






Publish or Perish

Can you be a somebody if you haven’t written a book?

Sadly, a blog is not a serious project. At least, an obscure blog doesn’t count for much in the professional world. Even an unsuccessful book, on the other hand, seems to carry a bit of weight. The difference may relate to how easy it is to blog and how hard it is to produce a book. A site like this, for instance, runs essays that are little more than rough drafts worked out on the fly. I don’t outline the sequence of posts in advance. There is no obvious progression over time except for the inevitable growth in understanding that comes to every person who looks inside and tries to improve. It’s an ad hoc project, made up of hodge podge of topics covered with varying skill. A book would require organization, commitment, and (let’s face it) editing.

Why bring this up? Well, partly because of how it stung when the local college turned down my proposal for a community education course on integrative approaches to mental health. I worked hard on that submission, and it appeared pretty solid to me by the end. There was a clearcut focus, a series of relevant and interesting lecture topics, and subject matter that gets increasing attention in the psychotherapy world. Given the large number of therapists in this region, and the huge local interest in personal growth, it seemed likely that the college would be interested in letting me run the class. Wrong.

Possibly, if I’d written a book about the subject the proposal might have been accepted. Although an MD is generally considered a solid credential, without training in psychiatry or at least graduate work in psychology, I lack the sort of background that colleges look for in evaluating mental health instructors. A couple of websites and an acupuncture practice don’t count. But academic institutions honor publication, and a book might have helped in this situation.

Fact is, I’ve been considering writing a book for some time. Indeed, there are several books I’d like to write.

At present I’m focusing most of my energy on my acupuncture business. Every once in a while I feel driven to write a series of essays for this or other blogs, but usually it seems like there’s no time. So how could I ever finish a book?

Admittedly, it will be hard. One possibility is to convert this blog into a book project. I could start at the introduction and put it out gradually, in serial form. Later I could pull it all together, aggressively edit the manuscript, and see about publication. Unlikely, you think? Well, it could happen.

So don’t be surprised if something more organized and directed starts forming here. But also be ready for business as usual. I’m just musing about options.

Only one thing is certain: I have more and more to say, and ordinary blogging is feeling less and less like the best venue for my expressions.

>> Share on Facebook
>>

Publish or Perish was published on October 18th, 2011 . 4 comments






Archives