IMHO, this famous saying speaks nonsense! Consider that between preschool and first grade I watched my mother slowly wither away and then die from depression after a painful divorce. Consider that my sister recently succumbed to alcoholic liver disease after drinking against her pain for decades.

Consider that I’ve watched friends destroy themselves in various direct and indirect ways, or that countless patients of mine suffered from self-inflicted wounds and diseases that finally killed them. If you weigh all that evidence (plus any of your own you’d care to add to the mix), you’ll recognize that life overwhelms many people; they cannot endure the hardship and pass from this world in misery. Where is the evidence to suggest that the universe serves up only ordeals we can handle?

On the other hand, there is no trauma or loss so severe it cannot be transmuted into something valuable. The fact that many people never effect such alchemy does not negate the truth that many others do. Transcendence of suffering is always within our reach, though we often don’t know how to grasp it.

Once I viewed a YouTube clip that showed psychiatrist Viktor Frankl talking with a young man afflicted with quadriplegia. This youth described in convincing terms how he gained meaning and insight through his devastating injury. Perhaps only a few paralyzed patients embrace their fate with this level of acceptance, but at least one did, so it must be possible.

On my personal blog I’ve recently started a series about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. ACT practitioners feel great fondness for Viktor Frankl, by the way. His most famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, describes the inhuman conditions he endured during his interment in a Nazi concentration camp. The prisoners suffered cruelty and privation that far exceeded the trials most of us complain about in developed nations today. And yet, when Frankl saw an opportunity for escape, he deliberately chose to remain so he could look after his patients in the rudimentary medical ward.

With that act, he ceased to be a prisoner and became a voluntary servant of humankind. Are we not told that Jesus elected to suffer and die for the benefit of humanity? Frankl adopted a Christlike stance and sacrificed his own safety and welfare in service of others. A miserable predicament became a source of Grace.

During an early session, my ACT therapist told me about Frankl’s discovery of meaning in what most would consider an unbearable situation. The story affected me very little at first. For years I’d looked at myself as irreparably damaged by the despair, bereavement, chaos, and cruelty of my formative years. Frankl’s tale sounded like a rare exception to how people ordinarily respond, and I assumed his upbringing must have been exceptionally supportive. In short, I imagined him as almost a different species: the kind of human produced by a perfect family. Note that I dreamt up this myth without any evidence one way or the other about the man’s childhood.

After a year or two I finally broke down and read Man’s Search for Meaning, and I finally got the point. By that time I was starting to release my grip on the inflexible belief that my personality had been ruined at an early age. An inner transformation of cruel circumstances into tender and meaningful experiences was manifesting in my own life. Since my childhood surely counts as traumatic, I had to abandon the conviction that early mistreatment dooms a person to a lifetime of pointless suffering.

Although my upbringing exposed me to more loss and danger than most, I grant its advantages were not insignificant. My father’s intelligence was passed on to me genetically, and his love of learning came to me as he informally taught me about science, history, and politics over his morning coffee. Although my dad’s household was otherwise dismal, every summer I spent time in other settings where there was more love and freedom. And I’ve been told that in my first year or two of life, before the divorce and my mother’s depression, my mom treated me with boundless tender affection.

But is it not the case that every person is exposed to both positive and negative influences during childhood? I’ve met many people over the years who came from horribly damaged households, and every one of them had unique strengths. And each had enjoyed at least some positive childhood experiences. Every person’s task in life is to build on assets and transform deficits, and we each will find both in our ledger.

So no, God does not protect us from being crushed by fate. But everyone has the potential to bear up under life’s pressure. We need guidance, support, and perseverance, but transcendence can be achieved. In my own case I see this especially clearly in the aftermath of a recent painful and life-threatening illness, which continues to create discomfort and limitation. Despite a situation that might once have reduced me to quivering defeat, I stayed fairly upbeat throughout by maintaining a perspective of open-hearted curiosity. I can honestly say that the experience feels positive, on balance, despite the hours of painful vomiting, the indignity of prolonged medical procedures, the uncertainty about my future, and the possible demise of an acupuncture practice I’ve been building for two years. If this wounded soul can rise above the mire of suffering, I believe anyone can, with practice and proper instruction.

Ever since the Enlightenment, Western humanity has been operating blindly. As Christian theology retreated before material science, people were left with few wise resources to help them cope with hardship. Only during the past fifty years did the West begin to awaken to Eastern meditative traditions, which have consistently offered effective recipes for transforming suffering. These practices do not depend critically on metaphysical claims that contradict conventional scientific theory, and so have helped fill the gap opened by a weakened Christianity. (It may not be coincidental that these practices first originated in India, where the populace has a long history of privation.) But until recently in the West, instead of wisdom we’ve been served up a hodgepodge of unproven psychological treatments and potent but ineffective drugs. Eastern philosophies don’t appeal to everyone, and choosing among the numerous strains can be confusing.

Fortunately, the scene is improving. To my eye ACT is one of the most promising and well-developed therapeutic approaches currently available, though there are many hopeful emerging paths. With these techniques, which combine the best of Western and Eastern knowledge, more and more of us will begin to find hardship enriching rather than merely punishing.

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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.

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We seldom get queried in this way, since the more typical questions are: “Who are you?” or “What do you do?”

So take a moment to answer the question of what you consider yourself to be, first and foremost. Some of us will answer with our careers: “I’m a physician.” or “I’m a writer.” Others will state an important social connection: “I’m a mother.” or “I’m an American.” A few will refer to religion: “I’m a Muslim (or Atheist, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, etc).”

But few of us will reply, without forethought: “I am a warm-blooded animal that walks upright on its hind limbs and possesses an enlarged brain.” And yet, that is probably the most central and accurate description we could provide.

Look back in time some five-thousand generations, or one-hundred-thousand years. Anatomically modern humans walked the earth, but most contemporary roles didn’t exist. Concepts about personality and social function, if articulated at all, must have been of more limited scope. We have no way of determining the language environment of these beings. No doubt people back then related to others as parents, children, and tribal members. Some may have been Shamans; some may have been leaders. So as individuals they may have had feelings about basic categories of identity and perhaps even words for them. But my guess is that they were far more aware than we are of their kinship with other animals and nature at large.

The biological urgency of nutritive, protective, and reproductive drives may well have dominated their consciousness in place of the concerns about money, time, and networking that occupy our lives in the information age. They probably understood much more intuitively than we do how similar humans are to bears, monkeys, wolves, and antelope.

Humans were living, breathing, eating, defecating, copulating, and nurturing as animals long before they were writing, analyzing, conceptualizing, and philosophizing as citizens. Despite this, today we give far more attention to our concepts, and our feelings about our concepts, than we do to the basic biology that keeps us in the game. How many of us read a newspaper at breakfast or a magazine while sitting on the toilet? How many of us listen to our iPods while running or watch TV while digesting dinner? All these practices act to divorce us from our bodies. However, unlike unions between lovers, matrimony between mind and body is always “’till death do us part!” There is no chance of divorce, only alienation.

The powers of silence that I touted in a recent post may offer a return to our native state of mind. Before we learned to escape into the constructed realm of symbols and society, we remained grounded in the given world of bodies and biology. Make no mistake, I believe that language can help people heal, as evidenced by my efforts in writing these essays. But even more healing is learning to live beyond words, to dwell as organic beings embedded in the biosphere and related to all other life forms through an elaborate, eternal interchange. The material of our bodies came from the earth and constantly exchanges with it. Every calorie that keeps us alive is owed to some other organism that preceded us. Once death meets us at the end of our days, our physical forms will be released so their elements can again enter the timeless cycles of carbon, calcium, and creation.

In the meantime, we can find simple, lovely contentment by embracing, in silence, our bodies with their constant throbbing, gurgling, aching, hungering, and aging. Rather than feeling beleaguered by our organismic limits and imperatives, we can learn to honor them. Rather than hating how time drains the bloom from our faces and erases the potency from our contours, we can honor the natural, inevitable, and majestic seasons of every life.

Whenever the opportunity arises, I like to watch insects and other small creatures. The delicacy of their movements, the purposefulness of their travels, and the incredible intricacy of their bodies all impress me. A warm feeling of affection for these little beings often follows. If even a gnat displays this miracle of life, imagine how impressive you are as an organism. Think of the formidable truth of your brain, with its thousand-trillion synapses mediating a torrential flow of information. Remember the marvelous fact that you grew from a single cell inside the body of another organism much like you in every way.

With the stillness of meditation one begins to feel the ticking of the body, the flow of consciousness in the brain, and the exchange of air in the lungs. These activities are never-ending while we live, and through them our bodies are continually inviting our affection. Our living processes can be seen as somatic seductions that can help us reconnect with our true forms and escape the complicated tangle of words. They reach out to us every moment, beckoning us back into the sublime experience of living as warm-blooded bipeds on this ancient and bounteous earth.

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On the one hand, they’re fun to work with and they communicate ideas, but on the other they lead to big conflicts in society, relationships, and the human mind.

One problem is that language is unconstrained; you can say or think almost anything, whether it is helpful or not. Furthermore, a single object or event can be described in a multitude of ways, which invites disagreement. This leads to intense discord because we are programmed (either by evolution, society, or both) to take words very seriously. As people we attack our neighbors for saying ‘forbidden’ things, and we attack ourselves for thinking them.

Two essays back we discussed silence, which is key to resolving this language dilemma. The topic grew out of a quote a relative sent me, but it also tapped into concepts that I read recently in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (2011) by Steven Hayes, Kirk Strosahl and Kelly Wilson. My understanding of that book, in turn, was aided by an older text about language evolution called The Symbolic Species by Terrence W. Deacon. And no doubt the influence of Eastern meditative traditions on that prior ‘Silence’ essay is obvious.

Citing these sources is my way of emphasizing that none of what I wrote was particularly original. In fact, it is quite likely that almost anything anyone writes about mental life has been presented before but with different phrasing. Go to any bookstore and in the self-help/psychology section you’ll find vast numbers of tomes that cover more or less the same material.

Granted, neuroscience reveals new mechanisms in the brain almost every day. But despite all the impressive research into brain physiology, we know little more about how to thrive as a thinking organism than was understood in the Buddha’s day. As I’ve argued in an earlier essay, when it comes to coping with the felt experience of being human, the sophisticated models of modern neuropsychology seldom improve on ancient wisdom. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, as articulated by Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson, basically retools the timeless truth that the best way to grow as a person is to gain the skill of silencing, or at least doubting, the verbal mind.

On the other hand, it can be very fruitful to look at established wisdom in novel ways. Doing so solidifies knowledge as information gets reinforced by repetition and nuanced by the alternate viewpoints offered by different authors. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT (pronounced as one word) elaborates a clinical method that guides people to the realm beyond words, where we can find greater stability and less ambiguity. The endpoint may be the same as the Buddha’s, but the path has been modernized.

My post about silence outlined the three consecutive benefits that I believe accrue as one works to achieve mental quiet. The ultimate goal for many meditators is the spacious emptiness that consciousness finds within stillness. But although this is certainly a powerful incentive for learning to dampen thought, the earlier stages offer important insight into the inadequacies of language.

Both ACT and Eastern philosophies teach that words are arbitrary and unsubstantial. Meditation can make this truth experientially obvious, but in fact it is easy to demonstrate with examples.

Imagine you’re at a party and you inform someone that you’ve had a headache for a couple of days. Your companion looks at you with brows furrowed and says, “that’s just what my sister said before they found the brain tumor!” If you’re a neurologist and fairly confident, this statement won’t trouble you much; you know that most headaches are not ominous. But if you tend to worry and your knowledge of medicine comes from online reading about the myriad illnesses that can kill, the string of words ending in “brain tumor” might spark a panicked obsession. And yet, even a hypochondriac could brush off the remark if the person speaking was known to be a habitual and mean-spirited liar. However, if a close friend confirmed that the liar’s sister actually did die of brain cancer, the potent sentence could propel you into your local clinic with demands for an MR scan.

See how the sentence shifts in meaning and import depending on who hears it, who utters it, what others say about the speaker, and so on? Context is decisive.

As another example consider this sentence: “Your dog looks dead.” If it’s spoken after your beloved pet gets struck by a minivan, the remark will sound devastating. If you hear it while your sweet, elderly dog rests on the hearth rug, you will likely feel annoyed. And if the comment follows your dropping a hot dog into the sand at a beach picnic, you’ll probably laugh. Yet even in these situations the speaker’s status will affect your interpretation. If a child pronounces your dog dead after the car accident you’ll be somewhat less alarmed than if a veterinarian does. And if your elderly neighbor with Alzheimer’s insults your pet sleeping by the fireplace, you’ll be more forgiving than if your sharp-tongued brother says the same words. Your mood will also have an impact; you’ll be less likely to lash out after your sibling’s quip if you feel contented than if you feel miserable.

Today in a support group one of the members explained why she was in a state of agitation and sorrow. She spoke quite insightfully about how a painful situation affected her. Afterwards, she asked, “did that make any sense?” My reply was that yes, what she said sounded very reasonable. But I also added that she could have spoken in very different terms about the same circumstances, and she might still have sounded articulate and convincing.

Words are like this. Contradicting verbal statements can sound equally true in isolation. Meanings shift and change depending on context, speaker, listener, mood, history, prejudice, motivation, etc. Word strings cannot be relied upon as fixed determinants of reality (and yet they often are!). Two people can describe a single conversation in completely different ways, especially if they were arguing while it played out. What’s more, today’s “hell” can become tomorrow’s “heaven.” In fact, it happens all the time.

If language is this unconstrained and arbitrary during conversation, imagine how unreliable it is during mental self-talk, when words are generated continuously without any feedback or objective evaluation by others. No wonder we can drive ourselves insane.

Earlier, this essay highlighted the benefit of using different words to say the same thing. But I’ll end it by emphasizing the even greater value of not employing words at all. Just as re-phrasing helps learning, de-phrasing promotes wisdom.

That was the point of writing about silence. As long as we remain submerged in the murky swimming hole of words, we miss the fact that human life is meant to be lived on dry land. While lost in our fascinating but confining verbal turbulence, we miss the warm sunshine, the birds in the trees, and the children playing on the shore. We mistake both the medium and the message for reality. Most of all, we remain baffled by the unstable meaning, ominous implications, and contradictory concepts that come from words.

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But even though no one can squeeze guarantees out of fate, there is great unevenness in our fortunes. Some people simply seem luckier than others. They enjoy families that provide more resources of love and support. As a consequence, or maybe because of inborn personality factors, they grow into confident, resourceful, and resilient adults.

They suffer little self-doubt and have no sense of self-loathing. Their lives unfold relatively smoothly, and as they enter the later stages of adulthood they can look back with pride at how they built success. They may have achieved career acclaim, raised happy children, and/or simply radiated good cheer as they walked upright through the world.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way for everyone, and we all know of human situations that fall short of such comfort and success. First, there are the large populations across the globe that suffer under extreme poverty, chronic warfare, and oppression. We see the images of shantytowns and war-torn cities in which stunned and dusty children wander wide-eyed and alone. We observe their innocent, wounded faces and wonder: what can these orphans possibly hope for in the future?

And yet, they seem far away and unconnected to our affluent societies. We try to reassure ourselves that these kids don’t suffer like we would in the same situation, because they don’t know what they’re missing. It’s a vain and selfish hope, of course, but sometimes it’s our only defense against feeling overwhelmed by the unfairness in the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps a child gets sick, or a marriage ends, or a career fails. Maybe illness strikes and the end of life comes into view. Grief, failure, and injury shatter our peace, so we begin to seek answers.

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

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

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

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

What we need is silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If so I have good news: you can break free from all that negativity. The trick is to learn to make the mind work toward your best interests rather than against them.

Ever since starting this blog, I’ve sung the praises of meditation and right attitude as tools for building mental health. Not that many years ago I felt horribly familiar all the adjectives that open this post. I had tried many types of therapy and many different pharmaceuticals without much improvement. Eventually, I turned attention inward and began to work with my thoughts and feelings directly.

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 am much more resistant to despair. Meditation succeeded where medication failed.

With the aid of such skills, my mental life improved so dramatically that I now question the value of all the 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.

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 negative 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 unbearable darkness. 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:

• 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.
• 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.

Let’s start with the last question. When evolutionary biologists study emotion, they usually ask about its survival value. What is it that makes feelings useful to a creature’s reproductive success?

This approach troubles me, because it suggests (implicitly) that animals might just as well have evolved as heartless robots, devoid of any true investment in life. The only reason for feelings in this style of evolutionary logic is that they increased mammalian ability to foster viable offspring. And note that the word mammalian is not arbitrary. Such hypotheses generally go on to assert that reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates are devoid of meaningful emotion. Which, if you think about it, is another way of saying they don’t care about their lives.

But as I’ve pointed out in another post, even spiders seem pretty insistent on their preference for living over dying. So-called lower animals don’t appear robotic and unaffected. They behave quite passionately when their survival is threatened. Could it be that feelings aren’t just utilitarian, but fundamental to life?

Consider next how this reductionist style of evolutionary reasoning gets applied to psychiatric conditions. How does this rubric explain the persistence of mental afflictions in human populations? After all, psychiatric conditions strike during reproductive years and carry a significant mortality rate (possibly as high as 20% for bipolar conditions). If we argue by selection, we must conclude that the reproductive benefits outweigh the risks.

What are the positive qualities that accompany mental instability? Here we start by considering that intellectual and artistic abilities might have evolved because they increase a mate’s desirability. The idea is that the cavemen who could paint evocative bisons had more success with the cave-ladies. Those who created also procreated.

Then remember that mental health conditions occur more commonly among artists and visionaries. Could the persistence of madness result from its tendency to increase creative output, not to mention reproductive drive?

It’s a reasonable argument, and probably one with some underlying truth. But to me it seems a surprisingly uninspired view of inspired lunacy. It sounds like something a bureaucrat would think up.

And in fact, one criticism of Darwinian theory has always been that it suits capitalists. Bean-counters like “survival of the fittest,” because it justifies the hoarding of beans. To say that passion, creative drive and wild thinking evolved through better baby-making may not be wrong, but it may leave out mysterious and vital undercurrents in human life.

Let’s imagine, momentarily, that there is more to the cosmos than the material realm. It could be, after all, that mystical forces affect our lives. In which case we might expect that some of our qualities result from influences other than competitive insemination and over-protective child-rearing. We might have lessons to learn, for instance. Maybe some human qualities arose to help us evolve in the spiritual rather than biological sense.

So could it be that mental health problems are serving a higher purpose? Just possibly, the pain of psychiatric distress serves to break down egos and open minds to realms beyond the physical. Maybe “mental illnesses” are not as disastrous as many believe. Maybe they are Grace in formation.

If that were true, and I admit to wild (creative?) speculation here, we would be completely misguided in trying to suppress such conditions. By doing so, we would be robbing people of their chances for growth. We’d be better advised to help the potent energies of psychiatric distress play out in safe and instructive ways.

Unfortunately, the choice in current society is all-too-often between medication and alienation. Or between hospitalization and jail. Inner turmoil no longer has any chance of creating shamans or prophets, because we drug down or lock up anyone who deviates too far from the claustrophobic modern mold.

This is the danger of accepted wisdom. Everyone assumes that natural selection is the sole element at play in evolution only because that’s what everyone assumes. While selection is no doubt a potent force, it has not been proven to be the only influence on evolution, and many scientific facts suggest that we need a more encompassing theory. Postulating purposeful nudges that supervene among the changes sculpted by selection would resolve the evidentiary problems in conventional evolutionary theory. (These nudges wouldn’t necessarily require an omnipotent deity, but could arise as part of the natural self-organization of the cosmos—but this is a topic for another essay.)

Yes, it may be that feelings, madness, artistry, and the like can all be explained in terms of robotic animals competing for resources and mates. But let’s at least admit that richer and more interesting possibilities remain. Until they have been ruled out, we are neither scientific nor inspired if we dismiss them from consideration. And if other explanations deserve attention, then so do other treatment models. If mental conditions are meant to teach us, our society should honor rather than abhor them, and our psychiatric care should promote rather than hinder their flowering.

There is such a thing as depression.

We feel it when life fails us too many times. Too much hardship, too much death, too much negativity can all summon it to our door. Many of us know it too well. It ruins our enjoyment of life and makes us question our worth. When entangled in depression, we feel beleaguered and pessimistic. Nothing lifts our spirits, not even our loves, our offspring, or the loveliness all around. The world appears lifeless and gray. The feeling may last a day or a year, and we resist it the entire time. We feel relief when it leaves us, as it inevitably must.

At present insomnia dominates my experience. I get so little sleep, and feel so tired as a result, that depression hovers near from morning to dusk. I exercise vigilance to avoid the bleak thoughts that seem so appropriate when my mood dips. To keep from trashing my life with my thinking, it is sometimes safest to simply silence my inner voice. As I once said in a Tweet, “if you can’t think anything nice, don’t think anything at all.”

There happens to be an upside to sleeplessness: one finds many hours during the night for meditation. In fact, if I don’t exercise my meditative skills when laying awake in bed, I can get lost in regret, fear, and doubt. Better not to think than to face those demons.

So it’s good that I’ve gained enough skill from meditation practice to actively quell my thoughts. It is no longer difficult for me to stem the flow of discursive thinking to a mere trickle. So I avoid falling prey to anxiety and remorse. I can sit with the depressed feelings and simply observe them without letting them color my worldview.

And this is key. Because the worst thing about a depressed mood is how it taints one’s interpretation of life. Events and sensations that might normally be neutral, or even enjoyed, are viewed negatively. And experiences which are unfortunate seem catastrophic. Better not to interpret, better not to think.

On the other hand, if depression is experienced with neither thought nor interpretation, it reduces to strong feeling. Not pleasant, but bearable. The sting in low moods comes from what they make us believe more than how they make us feel.

In fact, if we allow the intense sensation of depression to flow through mind and body without words or valuation, eventually it acquires a surprising quality. Unresisted, it starts to feel a bit like bliss. Depression, after all, represents a high energy state that vibrates the entire system—just like pure pleasure.

There is a big difference between bliss and depression, however. Bliss embraces. It is like dwelling at the bottom of a valley. There is stability plus peace, and mental explorations feel safe.

In contrast, to reside in depression and feel it positively is to balance on a knife blade. It is like tiptoeing along a narrow, rocky ridge-line, where the slightest misstep can end in destruction.

To speak in thermodynamic terms, bliss is a stable equilibrium, but serene depression is an unstable one. Stability confers safety; instability demands care. To maintain the unstable equilibrium of wordless depression we must squelch every needless thought, and keep the mind as still as possible. We must resist interpreting anything. It takes a meditative approach and an steadfast refusal to avoid explanations of feeling.

Not long ago I finally learned firsthand that with practice and care it is possible to sit with depressed feelings, silence the mind, and feel nothing but powerful energy. No fear. No regrets. No doubt. Just waves of emotion and, ultimately, acceptance.

One walks the high wire and needs to step cautiously. Every word of discursive thought carries danger. But by maintaining a silent mind one can experience depressed energy without judgment, which alters its tenor. One must perfect one’s balance, but one can find within the darkest of moods a beacon of golden light.

Not long ago I wrote a post proposing that Mental Health Day be renamed Spiritual Health Day. In that essay I explained how it seems to me that spiritual malady would be a more accurate and less damaging label than mental illness. With that in mind, I submit we should work to create crisis centers that nurture the soul.

Whenever people felt crushed by unrelenting sorrow, or burned with too much energy for normal life, or heard persecuting voices, or felt like God’s chosen child, they would be offered escape to a pleasant retreat in the countryside. Once onsite, they could work in an organic garden, or staff the stables, or help build a new lodge. They could ride horses, paddle in canoes, and play frisbee on the lawn.

They could come and go when they pleased. They would learn about the brain, and about psychiatric problems, but they would also hear how mental conditions have been positively viewed by other cultures. They could attend meditation sessions, practice a spiritual tradition if they chose, and they could make art of all kinds. Groups would play music and sing in the evenings. There would be no television, and no computers, but lots of books and endless craft supplies.

The tenants could choose whether to stay in dormitory-style lodges or camp alone in the wild. They would be encouraged to keep regular hours, to exercise, and to participate, but they would never be coerced. And each day a bus would arrive to bring in newcomers and let those who wanted to depart go home.

Those who felt in contact with mystical forces would be guided by spiritually advanced peers who had passed through similar gates. Those who wanted to talk about their problems could meet in groups. Others could journal on their own. Attendees would learn about the inspired but troubled minds of Mozart, Lincoln, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Plath, and many more. They would be taught to harness the positive aspects of their condition and minimize the negative. They would be guided by others like themselves instead of ‘normal’ professionals. A prerequisite for employment on the grounds would be direct experience with personal or familial psychiatric distress.

Medications would be available, maybe, but they would be voluntary only, and prescribed by doctors who understood the dangers of pharmaceuticals. There would be just as much emphasis on bodily as on mental care. Aerobics, yoga, Qi Gong, running, and many other physical activities would be offered. The camp would emphasize good food, socialization, and fun. At the same time, anyone who needed solitude could readily find it.

People would be asked to securely store their valuables prior to entry, so there would be no concern about theft or jealousy. And if anyone became unacceptably disruptive, the worst consequence would be a bus ride back out.

Perhaps this sounds too utopian to ever be realized, but there have been several programs along these lines over the years. Unfortunately, few have persisted and the model has not spread. The Quakers rejected dungeons in favor of humane asylums long ago, but in an era when few knew how to manage powerful mental states or transform them into positive experiences. Nowadays reimbursement issues and the dominance of drug companies have produced the modern mental ward, complete with little paper drug cups and heavy steel doors.

The new model might succeed where earlier experiments broke down, because it would emphasize management by those who had been through psychic torment but grew beyond it. This would not be a paternalistic asylum, but a fraternal refuge. The staff would not be guards, but guides. Without enforced confinement, with little reliance on drugs, and in a rustic setting, costs could be minimized.

Perhaps I’ll be accused of living in a dreamworld, but the vision of a naturalistic healing center has been on my mind since childhood. Why must mental health care be administered in sterile hospitals? It’s not like psychiatric problems are transmitted by germs.

We don’t lock the grieving widow in a mental ward because she feels overwhelmed by sadness. We take her to a chapel, surround her with friends and family, and honor her departed husband. When people die we use the inevitable emotional turmoil as the pivot for a ceremony calling Grace into the world.

Or consider that when people feel powerfully moved at weddings we don’t hand out Ativan; we encourage the full expression of Bliss.

When emotion occurs in a group setting it becomes a shared and sacred event. Even tragedies like earthquakes and terrorist attacks bring this quality to light. Look at the rituals and monuments built around 9/11.

So why can’t we use the same tactic to deal with the isolated breakdowns and breakthroughs that occur sporadically every day in every culture? Why not emphasize the power of these experiences rather than their pathology? Why not offer the suffering a setting where they can be safe while they rattle their mental cages and seek a path toward peace?

Mental turmoil can be used as the base metal for an alchemical transformation of spirit. Agony can turn to insight with the right support. Maybe what I’m suggesting isn’t the best answer, but to me it sounds better than Bedlam.