Illness and Surrender

I am bipolar.  I have been since my junior year in college.  Since then I have managed my illness; sometimes successfully and sometimes less so.   It is a source of pain.  Arguably the deepest cutting pain is for someone to think that I am "geting sick" .    Of course at times it has been a needed statement and the most loving of observations.  Still it is arguably my most painful phrase and greatest fear.  Why? 

True liberation is not fearlessness.   It's facing fear even though it's there.  It's an intimacy with fear.   It's the ability to hold fear close as well as anything else and not push it away.   So let's take a look.  Of what am I afraid?  To be crazy, to get sick, is to be out of control. Even those basic assumptions about what is real and what is not, what is a dream and what is not, all come into question in psychosis.  There is also the potential that I would hurt myself or others amidst a psychotic episode.  These are things of which to be frightened, especially given my value of love and compassion. Even as I write them I can feel the knot it creates.  I can feel mysefl saying --  not me, I couldn't be that way.  It is a drive to disconnect, to separate, to create a boundary by elevating myself by comparison.  It is an endeavor doomed to failure.   At the same time though, I begin to feel the tenderness of that raw spot.  It's heart breaking really.  How fragile it all is, how human it is to strike or to  lash out because we got hurt and because we didn't didn't know any better. Really underneath it all, we all want to know that we belong, that we're good deep down, that we are loved. What would happpen if we believed that all would be ok no matter what - not because of anything we did or didn't do but simply because we are.   We forget who we are.  We define our totality in such limited ways.  The confusion comes because we gloss the connections to all else that is ever present.  We are worthy simply because we are; we exist.   There is nothing outside of this moment that we are in that anyone needs.

Back to fear.  Back to psychoses.  Back to control.   Here is a list of my worries, and fears about "getting sick." 

• That I've failed - have not done enough , have not tried hard enough
• That I've let others down
• That I will never come out of that fog
• That I will harm someone or myself
• That I will lose my job
• That I won't ever be able to function again
• That my partner will leave me
• That I will say hurtful things to others especially those whom I love
• That I will cause enormous pain for others around me
• That I have not faced life with utmost integrity
• That there is something wrong with me
• That I am unlovable

Let's take a minute to explore failure.  I do not like to fail.  I have not done it often.   Failure is painful.  Why?  I take failure to indicate something about me.  It is hard to separate failing from who I am.  Failure, especially in those endeavors that are dear, seems to indicate something about me and it is further evidence of my inadequacy and not belonging.  Failure in areas that are important to me personally seems to send the message that I am not ok.  It is a judgement that I am not enough.   It is easy to equate success and failure on a given endeavor, as saying something immutable about us.   Each is magnified because they feel like they come from our unique expression. Success feels like a positive acknowledgement of our unique expression and rejection like the a negation of our expression. It that really true?  Of course what we forget is that both success and failure are always filtered through the eyes of the one making that determination. And ultimately true success is how life itself expresses itself through you and that is much larger than one's art  or what one does and how it is viewed by the world. True success in this more absolute realm is really about being an instrument of truth and love and that is a moment to moment endeavor that is not always measured by worldly success and is not measured by form.

• When was the last time you failed?
• When was the last time you "tried" your absolute hardest?
• When was the last time you tried something new or that you were not good at?
• When was the last time you succeeded at something?
• When was the last time you were praised for something you did?
• When was the last time you were castigated for something you did?
• How did you feel in all of these instances?
• What went into your successes and failures?  Does that belong to "you"
• What would happen and how would you feel if you tried your absolute hardest and still failed?

On the other hand, failure (and success too) can be incredibly powerful gateways towards surrender.  I suspect when you truly realize there is nothing you can do, and yet you have not succeeded or you have succeeded but are still not satisfied,  then grace, spirit, divinity can aid.  Surrender can enter.   Don't confuse giving up with surrender though.  Giving up is very different than complete surrender.  Giving up often has a a quality of hope or frustration, as if registering your irritation with the heavens will fix the situation or with hope there is still the tiny part that holds out that it will be different. The quality of surrender is a kind of equanimity that simply says  "this is how it is."  There is a quietness about surrender.  There is a stillness to it.

Dante suggested that above the gates of hell was written "abandon all hope ye who enter here" but  perhaps these are not the gates to hell at all, but to heaven.  Perhaps it is only when we have abandoned hope of changing, improving or creating a better me or better world or a better heaven that grace that fill us with the capacity to act in its behalf.  That grace will give us the eyes to see the heaven that exists in the current, the perfection that is manifesting now.  This is when life truly  begins.  In this, perhaps my sickness is is my greatest gift and my biggest opportunity.   In this, my sickness offfers my greatest chance for surrender.

So what does surrender look like with respect to my mental illness.  I started to write "internalizing that I will never get better" and while this may almost seem right at first,  it is not. I do not know that I will or won't get better.   The statement "internalizing that I will never get better" truly means I am clinging to the idea that I will get sick which is hardly any better than the thought that I won't.   It means that the dark hole of not knowing is too hard and not being able to plan for it is so frightening I would rather resign myself to "getting sick at some other point"   To hang out in the realm of uncertainty is more challenging.  The truer reality is I don't know.  Real freedom lies in the discomfort  of NOT KNOWING.

Managing my illness has some different pitfalls that perhaps don't surface as much with some other illnesses.  The mind is often considered the seat of who we are. When the brain is declared dead, we are declared dead.  It's what we say distinguishes us from animals.  So, when that essential tool functions in ways that are societally problematic or when the mind seems broken or in need of help, it can be easy to blame oneself for the problem.  Did I not do enough?  Did I "think" the right thoughts?  Did I let too much stress into my life? Did I not monitor myself more carefully?  Fill in the blank --  thought ostensibly drives the behavior.  As I write this I am realizing that I imagine this must be a part other illnesses too but I don't wonder if the element of "well this simply happened" has more space to grow.  With the mind it is sometimes hard to separate "I" am not a function of my thinking.  It is very easy to blame oneself when the mind gets sick.

Managing my illness is different than surrender.  Surrender includes management and yet is larger than it.  Surrender does not  mean that I stop taking my medication or seeing the pyschiatrist or my therapist or stop listening to their suggestions.  I suspect it means fully and completely acknowledging the pain of living with my mental illness.  It also means the courage to not be complacent or passive about any part of my care.   It is comprised of truth telling and facing consequences. Too often I am inclined to accept the opinions of medical experts without letting them know how it is affecting me or what I want from life.   I suppose it means at its heart looking at the pain that bipolarity raises of not being enough, of simply being flawed or wrong and its implications in all areas. 

The funny part is of course that something is wrong and something is flawed.  That is the human condition.  And we often spend our lives in search of better "me's'" striving for perfection, striving for the perfect personality, acting this way so these people will like us or not judge us; acting in another manner to curry the favor of others, but no one is without flaw, no one is always correct, no one is without sin.  The beautiful part is that it does not matter.  Enlightenment has been defined as "without anxiety about imperfection"  I think that is a lovely description.  It is the perfection intrinsic to imperfection.  With that recognition comes authenticity, truth,  freedom and love. Relating from that recognition the whole to whole; not fractured insufficiencies endlessly comparing and competing in an dance of upmanship, would make for an interesting world.

What An Itch Revealed About the Eternal

The other night I experienced the itchiest of itches. At first, I got up to get something to scratch it with but then I decided that it would be fun to simply sit with the itch. I noticed that what I was calling “an itch” was actually something a lot more fluid. At first the sensation of a kind of prickliness dwelled in one place on the surface, then it moved deeper. At one point it became a kind of pulsing and at another it disappeared altogether, only to reappear a little while later. Was it really all the same thing? As I brought my attention, awareness and curiosity to my itch, I recognized that it offered a wonderful opportunity to explore the meaning of impermanence, space, awareness and conditioning.

We are conditioned to chase pleasurable experiences and avoid discomfort and unpleasantness. Without being a biologist, I’m guessing that it’s hardwired into us and has been incredibly adaptive for surviving. When faced with discomfort or pain we often seek relief immediately. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with seeking relief from pain or discomfort. It is not masochism that we’re after. But what if our discomfort or pain had something to teach us about who we really are? What if instead of reflexively seeking relief from one’s discomfort, one became curious about it? What exactly is pain or discomfort anyway? Sometimes we do not have the luxury of being able to relieve our discomfort or pain. What happens then? I decided to look into what this simple discomfort could show me. For me, the itch became the opportunity to look deeply into reality. It was perfect because it was not so difficult as I imagine chronic or serious pain could be and I knew that I could stay with it and glean valuable lessons about fluidity and the changing nature of phenomena. Something as seemingly insignificant yet “stable” and consistent as an itch was a doorway for insight.


As I sat with the ever-changing itch I became less aware of it as an “itch” per se. A big space existed and in it was this “movement” which was traditionally labeled “itch”. There were sensations; pressure, tingling, sharpness, shifting. Soon the desire to scratch the itch disappeared and soon after the series of sensations I had been calling an itch disappeared altogether too. In a way it was a beautiful microcosm of our lives. The itch was born, lived for a while and quietly disintegrated into nothingness .

Our minds try to give the world a sense of continuity and stability but at some level nothing is as static as it seems; it is changing all the time. It is all born anew each moment but for our mind which strings it together.

So the itch was physically uncomfortable but could it tell me something about emotional discomfort or pain? When one experiences emotional pain what exactly is it? Does it stay the same over the course of five minutes? an hour? a day? The next time one is feeling emotional pain, what happens if one sits with it for a few minutes? Is it constant ? Do other thoughts/feelings enter one’s mind/body? what is the story that is being told? What is the texture of the pain? What is the mechanism by which it keeps going?

It seems that emotional pain must rely upon our minds re-telling the story over again and resisting what is going on right now. It is common to seek relief from the pain by re-hashing what "injustice" or "difficulty" or "problem" one is experiencing. It’s as if we think by re-telling the story it will come out differently, or we can soothe ourselves by dwelling on the details but does that really have the capacity to bring sustained relief? What if instead of circumventing the pain by telling stories about it, what if we focused on the pain itself? -- where it hurt? what it felt like? (not the story about it – but what it felt like in the body/mind) what it might be trying to tell you? What if you weren’t even trying to get rid of the pain but instead, just letting it be there? It is like somewhere we were told that pain is bad and therefore we must get rid of it. But is that really true? It seems to me that pain just is. What happens to one’s sense of self when one allows the pain to simply be there? Who or what is it that can watch the pain being felt?

Frequently when one experiences emotional pain one adds the layer of “I" should not be feeling this way” but where does that come from? Who says one should not feel that way? The fact is that one IS feeling that way and to argue with what is will always cause suffering. In fact, it probably is the definition of suffering.

Clearly emotional pain and discomfort are similar to the physical discomfort of an itch in many ways.
Observing the itch also offered me insight into addiction. Ultimately, addiction at some level, is rooted in a false sense of self. With an addiction, the addict identifies more with that which they crave, rather than see what they crave as something that passes through who they really are. I am reminded of how powerfully compelling behavior is often likened to “itching to do something”. Yes, one may want the object one craves but so what? What happens to YOU if you do not get it? (Now I am leaving aside physical addiction to something for a moment – but even in those cases, ultimately what happens to one if one does not get the object they crave? It may feel unpleasant or painful or may perhaps even be deadly but why is even that not ok? I do not mean that to be morbid. Who do we know/feel ourselves to be both in the absence of what we crave and in its presence? When I felt compelled to scratch the itch, somewhere I had dialed into the back of my brain a story about my discomfort. Perhaps it was that my discomfort would never end if I did not attend to this itch or that even if I managed to avoid scratching now I would certainly scratch later. Somehow the itch felt enormous and bigger than me and it crowded out all else. Really that is a flip-flop of reality. With addiction our sense of identity becomes so narrow that we define ourselves through our addiction and we are unable to relate to the world except through the craving. Dissolving an addiction seems like it would require a reimagining of oneself, a true recognition of ourselves.

Ultimately, we are the space that contains the itch and the pain. We are the observing of the itch and pain. In that space the itch came, morphed, and dissolved into the sweet no-thing-ness. So will we.
But to quote Eckhart Tolle– only the eternal in you can recognize the impermanent as impermanent.

Dreams

Nights ago I dreamed that something was after my family. I even whimpered aloud as I once did as a little child. When I awakened it was clear that the nightmare had ended. It was clear that the absorbing story that frightened me just a minute ago, was not reality after all. It could have fooled me. It did fool me. The feeling was 0dd because in my life I have been so exceptionally content and happy. It was funny that "I" was not able to meet my dream with the same equanimity that I have been meeting the rest of life. I found myself marveling at this "other world" that managed to emotionally terrify me and handcuff my ability to be present. Yet in actuality the events were imagined. I was on edge. My adrenaline was pumping. It had all felt so real.


What if the world we live in is a lot like that? What if most people live in a dreamlike state; rarely aware of the true reality they could wake up to. Freedom is not the cessation of "bad" things from happening it is embracing what is happening simply because it IS happening. There exists a reality is below the surface of what passes for the real world and is a part of what we call the real world but in actuality it is more "real" than the things we touch, hear, see, smell or taste And yet ironically our access point to that richness of that reality is through thoses senses. We touch the divine through our bodies. Anything you have ever "experienced" of the divine or the formless has come to you through form by your senses. The dream world our minds recreate each moment is part of the real world. Yet have you ever awakened out of a deep slumber and for a few moments not had any part of your story come to consciousness ie) you were just present without referencing a who or a where or a what? Have you ever meditated and melted into a space where only the "isness" of the moment existed, where you were not thinking of a "me", where "every-thing" seemed to almost disappear. There is a richness to a world where we let things "be" as they constitute themselves before us in that moment. In our effort to control our world and rid ourselves of the fear of not knowing, we give a false consistency to the wildness of life, to the "suchness" of unmediated experience. We forget that the world is created anew through our own eyes each and every moment, that each and every moment anything can happen. So your father "always" criticizes the way you dress, and your best friend "always" gets withdrawn when you mention her relationship with her husband. How much does the fact that they acted that way in in the past - color your present moment with them? How much is your present conditioned by their "past' behavior? What would happen if you gave them the space to be whoever they were going to be in the moment you were interacting with them? What if you met them wherever they were and realized that you are both free to act differently at any moment and you both just might? You are not the accumulation of your deeds and no one else is either.

Forgiveness would be more prevalent. Forgiveness would come naturally because we would realize that we are each more than a tally sheet. It would come because we narrowed our lives to the present and gave ourselves the gift of relating to reality and not the "dream" world of what that person or situation was five minutes ago. Holding onto the past is painful. The present is always something we can handle. This does not mean that we need to put up with hurtful behavior, that we cannot remove ourselves from harmful situations, or that we cannot choose to spend time with other people, it simply means that the burden of attachment to something which is not now, is no longer there. Until you have forgiven, you are still in the dream world where at some level you believe you are a victim. Does that sound harsh? I do not mean it to be, I only mean it to help one free oneself. If you have not forgiven someone, then you are telling yourself a story in which you were wronged and that at some level things won't be ok until something else happens. Nothing ever needs to happen for you to be happy. Nothing ever needs to happen for you to be content.



Experiment

What if you really did nothing. Spend 10 minutes alone quietly sitting on a chair or lying in bed when you are not too tired. Language fails here but "try" to do nothing. Truthfully, I find its more like relaxing into nothing. No worries, there is no wrong way to "do" this experiment.



Debrief

What happened at the end of 10 minutes? Did your thoughts slow down? Did the "spaces" between your thoughts increase? Did you find your mind rattling on and on -- if so do you know how it started down that track? Did you find it hard to "do" nothing? Did you have a running commentary about how you weren't doing the exercise correctly? Did you fall asleep? Were you able to sit/lie for the full time? What constituted "doing" or "nothing" for you in the exercise? How do you feel? What were you able to sense during the exercise? What was your breathing like? Are you living your own life or is life living you?



The aliveness of the web of oneness can directly touch us in any moment that we are not ensnared in a believing a story about it. There is no magic to it. Just use your senses; your access point to the divine, to open to the world within the world, by experiencing without conceptualizing and by embracing the moment you are in. How will you know whether or not you are in the dream state? The more aliveness you sense in everything around you, the more your are leaving the dream world. The more your felt connection to that which inhabits the cosmos, the less you are living in the dream world.