Scientific Research On The Causes Of Schizophrenia Is Inconclusive

Today I was studying some of the more recent research at Schizophrenia.com about the causes of schizophrenia, but none of it, it turns out, is conclusive.  Researchers tend now to see the illness from a biological and "environmental" perspective.  Environmental means there are both psychological and social factors.  The writer of the research article went on to offer many possible reasons for the development of schizophrenia from inherited defective genes to emotional neglect in childhood to illicit drug use to lack of vitamin D during pregnancy to growing up in the city to a common parasite gotten from handling cat feces to being born in the winter months, etcetera.  In short, no one knows for sure.  One thing that does seem somewhat clear, aside from having a history of mental illness in one's family, is that stress factors into it.  Stress can trigger changes in the brain.  Also, you may have the gene for schizophrenia, but if there are no environmental factors triggering it, it remains dormant.  A gene has to be turned on in order for illness to manifest itself.

Those of us who developed schizophrenia most likely had not only a genetic predisposition, but multiple psychological and social factors as well.  Children and youths are said to be five to ten times more sensitive generally than adults, which is why the formative years are so crucial to anyone's development.  I wonder how many of us with the illness suffered from some sort of abuse when we were young.  In my case, I believe I suffered from some emotional neglect from my parents, ironically because they were so focused on my older brother who from a young age had "emotional problems".  My brother in turn argued that it was my parents who had the emotional problems and needed to go see a shrink more than he did.  (My mother and I did in fact visit with my brother's therapist on several occasions which was something my mother deeply resented.)  Personally, I think it is true that my parents, though very responsible financially and for covering our basic needs (particularly my mother), were not exactly parent material.  My father was emotionally distant and my mother critical, cool and resentful (again) of having to take care of two children without much help.  Her mother had told her early on that she would not be available to baby sit that often. I'm sure that hurt my mother and left her without a guiding resource to rely on.  Growing up, I resented my mother more than my emotionally absent father, because I was around her more.  It was only later after college, around the time I began hearing voices, that I began to sympathize with her as she graduated from taking care of her children to taking care of her mother and my father's mother as they began to age.  Now, of course, years after my brother and I left home and my grandmother's had died, she is a much happier person.  

Don't get me wrong, I love my parents.  I think they did the best they could, but I won't rule out the possibility that their behavior towards me when I was young contributed to me growing up dysfunctional.  Once the dysfunction had set in, I myself continued the trend by behaving badly too, but by then I was an adult or rather an adult child because they continued to take care of me.  The truth is there is no parenting manual and a lot of parents learn through trial and error...unless they fail to learn at all.  I know some people cringe at the idea that a mother (or any major caretaker) should be held responsible for their child's development of schizophrenia or any major psychological illness, but it seems as if there may be at least a touch of truth to that assertion.  It's not the whole truth because I believe genetics play a factor and are no one's fault.  Still, behavior affects biology, just as stress affects brain chemistry.  A human child is a wonderful, but delicate being and there needs to be a balance between physical care and mental/spiritual/emotional care.  Also, mothers (and fathers who step up to their parenting responsibilities) need a support system, friends and family, even a therapist and more and more these days, qualified daycare professionals.  Mothers in isolation are asking for trouble.

The area of schizophrenia that most practical scientists veer away from and ignore is the spiritual aspect of the illness, which of course necessarily intertwines with the psychological/social aspects.  It is not surprising to me that much about the illness is unknown because the very nature of spirit is that it goes beyond common knowledge and into the unknown.  I continue to assert that though biology probably sets the stage for schizophrenia, the voices themselves originate from someplace external to the individual.  Some call them spirits or angels or devils or, in my case, aliens.  Be they higher or lower powers because they are not tangible and visible, people assume that they don't exist.  And tangibly they don't exist, at least not in this dimension, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a link between us and them nonetheless.  It's more convenient to dismiss the idea and stick with scientific bias than to explore the other possibilities, however distant.  I've interacted with my voices for a long time and it has been my assumption that they don't want to be revealed to the public for whatever reasons.  And yet they do choose to reveal themselves at least in part to the mentally ill.  That's a safeguard for them because the mentally ill have in the past and now not been taken seriously, though I believe that is changing the more the mentally ill, such as myself, speak up.

The question remains in my mind why these spirits/beings either create mental illness in individuals or take advantage of genetic/psychological/social tendencies towards the illness.  It seems to come back to the miracle of biology, of life.  I don't believe in human telepathy, but I do believe in alien telepathy.  It's the stuff of science fiction I know, but once so was the idea of flying machines and computers.  Recall once it was common knowledge that the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth.  It's the brave individual who can come forward to speak an unpopular truth.  And really, who would want to consider what I say if it means that another non human life form can get inside our minds?  That's a threatening thought for the most stable of persons.  It no longer threatens me because I have established a compassionate relationship with these beings and I believe they are trying in some very challenging ways to help this world.  God works in mysterious ways and so do these beings who I believe are guided by a higher power.  I believe the whole universe and all the life in it is ultimately being guided.  But for all my beliefs, I do not know what happens after death.  Somehow I think these beings do know, but are either forbidden or unable to reveal it.  I sit with the fact that I don't know and may never know, at least not in this lifetime.

Acceptance

I told a friend the other day that I was okay with where I was at these days.  Maybe it's just that Spring has sprung around here and I'm feeling the release from a long winter into a kind of hopefulness.  I'm not sure.  I still go in and out of depression and some anxiety.  Just the other day I slept the day and night away because of depression.  I have a low tolerance for any kind of stress.  I can just manage to deal with my minimal responsibilities, more than that and I feel pain.  And yet, for all that, I am able to value my life.  I have a lot to be grateful for:  a safe home with cats for company, a caring family, enough money to live month to month, basic physical health, several creative outlets.  I also count myself as my own best friend.  Apart from perfection, which none of us can attain, I like and love myself.  Talking into a tape recorder these last four or five years has only gone to reinforce my friendship with myself.  My code of ethics is the discipline of self-honesty and honesty towards others.  I don't always succeed in that, but I do try.  And though I like and love myself, I still fall into thinking negative thoughts about myself.  I worry.

I work a program to help myself continue to heal from my own mental illness.  It's not a typical recovery program.  I have no support group.  I do not do volunteer work or part-time work.  Except for in this blog, I am not a mental health advocate.  I don't go to church each week and get involved with my local community.  And yet, I am in recovery and am doing fairly well.  Why am I okay?  Having financial support is a big reason why I think I am okay.  I know that may not last forever, but for now I am grateful for the space and time it allows me to work through watching over my illness.  Because I have had success combatting my illness due to financial support, I strongly believe that the mentally ill in this country should have the financial support they need.  Guilt free.  The general population has little idea how incredibly horrible the acute stages of psychotic illnesses are, lasting for not months, but years.  I used to say that it was like being mentally crucified.  That sounds so exaggerated, but it really isn't.  If you manage to survive the acute stage and get into the recovery stage, what kind of recompense can you be given for psychological torture lasting so long?  But aside from the idea of recompense for extreme suffering, there is the idea that spending some money is way more cost-efficient than having the mentally ill in hospitals, jails and rehabs or just plain homeless.  We can't afford to keep putting "undesirable" people away somewhere.  So a home, medications, therapy and some means of transportation are all basic needs that must be met for those unfortunate enough to have a severe mental illness.

Other than having my basic needs covered, I pay attention to myself and my voices and, as far as I am able, I reach out and care about a few people.  The computer has been a godsend for me because it has allowed me to meet other people in similar situations, all of whom really impress me with their intelligence, determination to recover and creativity.  Almost all of them are bloggers and many of them are artistic.  Before I was diagnosed as having schizophrenia, I thought people just got crazy and stayed crazy, but this is not true at all.  I continue to submit that psychosis goes through stages from a prodromal stage that leads up to the acute stage, which varies in length from person to person, and several recovery stages.  Many people who aspire to recover or who are actively in recovery start blogs.  I think blogging is therapeutic and informative.  It can boost self-esteem while forming a support network.  It's a positive creative outlet.  For some it is a means of doing advocacy work.  Some people blog daily or every other day, when so motivated, others, like myself just several times a month.  You can go at your own pace.  Life before the advent of the personal computer was very circumscribed for the majority of schizophrenia sufferers.  Especially those living far from active city centers.  The people I've met through blogging or mental health forums have helped me to recover.  I am indebted to them, which is why I continue to blog.  I have the hope that I am helping a few people along their way through mental illness.

My attitude about mental illness is that it is a journey rather than a life sentence.  I work with my voices.  They are no longer the enemy that they once were.  Through Buddhism I have come to see how to use my illness as part of my spiritual path.  I'm grateful to the voices.  They continue here and there to challenge me, sometimes calling me evil, but I feel so far away from being evil.  When I was acutely ill it was as if I were inside an evil world, but now, no longer.  I am free.  More often these mysterious voices tell me that they like and love me and I am comforted.  Perhaps my attitude of working with the voices through active compassion is not the usual perspective, but it is another strong reason why I am in recovery.  From the beginning the voices have been a mixture of good and "evil" with the good trying to help me survive the onslaught of the bad voices.  I have had friends with the illness tell me that some of the people they know have just horrible, tormenting voices that they have to detach from and that's the general view that voices are just plain bad.  I have real trouble believing this.  Even in hateful voices there is something to appreciate such as intelligence, creativity, determination.  Yes, those, too, are woven into the voices.  Even in the midst of hell there can be respite, some kind of humor, detached perspective.  Another point is that during the acute stage things are just that, acute.  The whole situation is perilous and yet you still have to find your way out of it even on your hands and knees, that, or die.  My acute stage lasted for 3 and a half years, possibly because I didn't commit to taking the anti-psychotic medications.  I was fortunate in that early on I was applying compassion to my voices even through my three psychotic breakdowns.  And if some voice did me a good turn, I remembered it.  For a long time into early recovery I was resentful of the voices.  My attitude was "why me?" Gradually as I turned towards Buddhism, the resentment faded.  Now I am no longer resentful which has brought me a lot of peace.

I keep hoping that some sufferer will take me seriously about applying compassion to the voices.  And compassion is part of every religion out there and part of humanitarianism itself.  It's hard to do when you're under attack, but it can be done.  Also, it takes time and repeated effort.  Recovery goes in stages too.  For me, it has taken years to get to this point, over a decade.  I think the more resistant an individual is the longer it takes, but as water over time smooths the roughest stone, so does compassion reduce the general suffering.  When I talk about compassion, I always mean it to include compassion for oneself as well.  Self-acceptance and friendship is really a must.  Most voices during their abusive phase, try to tear the individual down and that is why you have to build yourself up, not by being an egotist, but by loving and caring for yourself.  It is the individuals who internalize the voices negativity that get caught in self-destructive cycles.  Resist that negativity and eventually you liberate yourself and possibly the voices as well.

The Mind-Body Connection

Thank you Karen, for your thoughtful response to my last blog post.  I can definitely understand how you could feel angry at your schizophrenic friend for committing suicide.  Just about all of the people I've encountered online who have mental illness strike me as extraordinary and not freaks of nature.  If anyone one of them were to kill themselves, I would be very upset because it would seem to be such a waste of rich, human potential.  But, as you pointed out, it does take guts, strength and courage to survive and during our weaker moments sometimes we just give in and give up.  My ex-boyfriend committed suicide in 1999 when I was still quite psychotic.  My reaction then was shock and numbness.  I knew he was overwhelmed by his circumstances (paraplegia and dual addictions) and so, for him, I wasn't angry, just very sad.  I tried to put myself in his place and I realized that I, too, might have considered suicide.

You also wrote about how devastating family influence can be on those who suffer from serious mental illness.  I hear that and know that there's truth to it, though it can also work both ways depending on the family and the extent of a person's illness.  Some family members may be ignorant yet not abusive and generally well-meaning.  I've been very fortunate in that my family has been that way.  They provided me with a home and transportation and access to a therapist on a weekly basis.  I went insane mostly on my own private turf alone.  That was a blessing because I didn't pull them into my illness, but also difficult because I lived in such isolation.  I've since almost come to terms with my isolation because I know I impose it upon myself in order to reduce stress in my life.  People can be wonderful, can be stress reducers, but they can also create situations of daily stress.  So you're right, I don't have to live up to other people's standards of what should be my normal behavior; instead, I decide for myself on a day to day basis.  I also in turn give up most face to face friendships, have no support from a mental health support group and no place in my local community.  Because I have the financial support of my family, I have made the choice to be a recluse.  I know full well that many people don't have this ability, they live with their families and therefore the family dynamics come into play each day, each night.

When I compare the negative thought processes of mental illness to an addiction, I know I'm perhaps jumping to a conclusion, but, to me, it makes a fair amount of sense.  I look at my journals from when I was very psychotic and my delusional thoughts are as pervasive as an addictive substance.  I keep repeating the same pattern of thought over and over again and remained stuck inside something I almost wasn't willing to let go of.  I had an obsessive need to re-confirm my delusion each day and didn't leave room for other, healthier perspectives.  It wasn't my brain that was failing me so much as my own unshakeable attitude.  You wrote that the anti-psychotic medications make you less suicidal and I believe that; they make me less delusional and paranoid, but the drugs alone are not enough to get through this life.  You have to work a program inside your head, which includes monitoring what your thoughts are telling you and how it makes you feel.  I do that when I talk into a tape recorder each day and then listen back to it.  Or when I write in a journal and then re-read it.  I do the same thing when I write a blog entry or send an email to a friend.  Most often, when things go wrong for me, it's not outer circumstance and people, but my own mistaken assumptions and attitudes.  This is very good news because it places the power to change negative circumstances in my grasp.

There's a Tibetan Lojong slogan that goes, "Drive all blame into the one."  The one means into yourself. This is not an instruction to be a masochist, it's an instruction to realize just how much self-centeredness figures into negative circumstances.  When you take on the responsibility of truly taking care of yourself, you realize that no-one has the ability to make you unhappy but yourself.  To send the blame outwards is to give up control over your life.  In my last blog I was being critical of the media, but really, if I am aware, it is up to me how I respond to the media, just as it was up to your friend who committed suicide how he responded to his family's shame.  One problem is that we don't respond, we react and there's a big difference.  A response is measured and thought out and civil, a reaction is unmeasured, thoughtless and often angry.  My brother has called my mother a "reactionary liberal" meaning she doesn't stop for a moment to consider the other right leaning perspective, instead she gets indignant and the problem remains a problem.  We all have a tendency to do this, but it is a tendency that can be arrested.  In meditation that tendency is called practice and practice involves returning to the breath when you get caught up in self-centered thinking.  You learn to let go of the reaction and allow room for the response.  In addictive thinking my reaction to seeing someone smoking a cigarette is to want to smoke one myself, but if I interrupt that reaction and respond to myself with compassion, I can let the craving go.  If I apply the balm, the wound begins to heal.  The hard part is becoming aware of what it is you do, where the traps and triggers are and how to avoid them or override them.  The next hard part is just not engaging in the addictive activity.  Both are very hard to do, but it can be done, that's the main thing.  It is not impossible or someone else's fault or responsibility.  That's the thing about addiction, it's self-contained.  It really has very little to do with other people.

I place psychosis and addiction in the same general category because they are both about physical illness and mental illness combined.  Maybe the physical illness came first, but maybe not.  Addicts talk about having an addictive personality, but lots of people who would not be called addicts have addictive personalities.  We learn through repetition both positive behaviors and negative behaviors.  It is fair to say that someone with an addictive personality will become an addict of one sort or another if he or she engages in risky actions.  The mental illness precedes the physical illness (though not the genetic predisposition).  And honestly, I wonder about that in terms of psychosis.  Is it possible that our thought patterns could actually create physical imbalances/illnesses making a cycle, so that even if you took the anti-psychotic medications your thoughts could be working against your recovery?  We too often overlook the mind/body connection.

My purpose in bringing all this up is because I care; I don't want to lose anymore people to suicide when I feel and believe that they can overcome some of their negative circumstances through working with the very mind that seems to be betraying them.  There's a saying that goes, "Happiness is an inside job."  Well mental health is an inside job, but no one outside of you is watching over what you do except yourself, which means you've got to be very honest with yourself and keep monitoring your thoughts and feelings.  I will never say that it is easy.  It is not easy.  But it's worth it.

On Suicidal Thoughts

Several of my friends suffer from bouts of suicidal ideation despite taking medications for depression and/or psychosis.  After my last psychotic break close to 10 years ago, I, too, fell into suicidal depression while taking greater and greater doses of my anti-psychotic medication.  I spent a lot of time considering and imagining how I could end my life.  Ultimately, I settled on death by carbon monoxide poisoning in my garage.  Obviously, I didn't do it, but for a while I really wanted to.  From what I can remember, thinking about the ways I could kill myself became like an addictive narcotic.  It was oddly soothing to get serious about once and for all ending my suffering.  Instead of doing that I just held on through the following months of this.  My depression after my last break was so strong that I couldn't do much of anything.  I wound up forcing myself to go to a good local library so that I could check out a bunch of audiobooks to listen to and that's how I spent hours of my time, passively listening to story after story.  It made me realize that there was a larger world outside my sad corner of it.  It made me realize that other people were also struggling, yet living to tell their stories in a therapeutic way.

Suicide is the leading cause of death amongst schizophrenia sufferers covering about 10 percent or more of all deaths.  It's a massive problem, one that I think could be partially remedied through the reduction of the stigma attached to the illness.  The people I know attack themselves for not being "normal"; their self-esteem is always shaky.  There is a before/after scenario going on in their heads.  Before the illness struck them they were still a part of the human race, but afterwards they see themselves as defective, lacking in basic human resources such as the resilience to take on the responsibility of having a family, a job and a place in their community.  Even if they do have a family and/or a job and/or a place in their community, they are acutely aware that they have these things but at a greater cost than the general population.  They tire more easily and suffer from stresses that "normal" people would shrug off.  Their ability to get things done and to stay organized is challenged.  They fall into regularly comparing themselves to others, especially extremely successful people.  These comparisons in particular I think are the culprit that spurs on suicidal ideation and underlying these comparisons is this pervasive sense of isolation even when in the midst of people.

Is life easy?  No, it is not and that goes for all of us.  Yes some people are on the top of the Wheel of Fortune, but they can't stay there.  The illusion that there are people out there who are deliriously happy all the time is something that is taken for granted.  The media gorge on showing the success of popular figures who never seem to age and who stay forever bright, talented and wealthy.  Of course they also gorge on the crashing failures ad nauseam, and yet people continue to believe that some people are statically successful.  They are not.  They eat, shit, puke, age, worry and die just like the rest of us.  This is a very important point.  We ALL suffer.  No one is exempt.  To stay stuck in the comparison game, which is also more addiction, is to live in a delusion.  Easily said, but how do you stop comparing?  When you live among people, it is very difficult for even "normal" people to abstain from comparing their lot to someone else's.  Television brought the rich world into poor living rooms years ago and that continues with films and computers.  That is the lay of this land, there are those who have and those who have not.  But again, it's an illusion.  People who have also get struck by calamity, just as people who have not escape from calamity.  It's the luck of the draw.

So how do the handicapped who feel their disability every day fight off thoughts/feelings of suicide?  How do you get someone who wants to die to be willing to fight to live?  There's no easy answer, but I think it is very healthy to talk/write about these thoughts and feelings to other people.  That's a healthier response than shutting down and closing people out of your life.  It's also less shame based and it gives other people the opportunity to share their own stories of struggles.  For myself, believing in a higher power helped me to stay alive, though I know there are those who do not believe, but for them as well, there must be a belief in something greater than yourself, a cause or organization of people.  Belief in something greater puts your place in a better perspective.  You are not a god or demi-god with the weight of the world on your shoulders, you are instead a small but essential part of the whole.  Believing in a higher power is especially motivating because it involves the unknown potential in all things.  To suspend disbelief is to open to the world around you.  For me suspending disbelief means believing in the Buddha Nature of all living things, a belief in our essential goodness.  Belief in that one thing takes a great burden off of me.  I don't have to shame myself or others.  What I do have to do is understand myself and others to the best of my ability, understand and then communicate honestly.

Besides communicating with others and having a belief in something greater than yourself, you have to work on years of conditioning, the conditioning of seeing the glass as half empty instead of half full, years of negative thinking or what 12 steppers would call "Stinking Thinking".  And again, the addiction model I keep bringing up hooks in with the phenomenon of suicidal ideation.  In fact, suicidal ideation IS stinking thinking.  If you can become aware of your thought pattern while honestly acknowledging that it is unhealthy, you then have a choice in front of you.  Glass half empty or half full?  Do you stay with the negative thoughts which invariably wind you up back in thoughts of self-destruction or do you take a look around you and break out of your tunnel vision?  It's the tunnel vision of addiction--you take the substance, or do the action, or obsess on the thought which will bring pain to you, but before the pain comes the pay-off, the pleasure and yes there is pleasure in negative action/thoughts.  Some would call it comfort.  The comfort of doing things the way you've always done them.  And then the pain comes and seems to justify all the negativity making it all by then a vicious cycle.  Still, think back...there was a moment when you were aware of your negative thoughts stirring, when you had a choice.  Well, that choice always returns as long as you let yourself become aware of what the hell it is you are doing.

I still have suicidal thoughts when I get depressed, but I don't take it into the fertile ground of my imagination.  I leave it be.  So it never gets into the planning stage.  The challenge for me now is to not only stay alive but to find my place here and that means sitting with my own discomfort.  It's a conundrum, a riddle--how to live in this sea of constant change, this dimension of pleasure and pain.  It's also a challenge for every one of us.  I do believe that Nirvana exists and it is right here, right now.  Change your attitude, change your life, that's essentially what Buddha did when he woke up.

The Mentally Ill and Addicted

I've become friends with a couple of people online who are both alcoholic and suffer from schizophrenia, both of them happen to be men, but could just as easily be women.  The fact that they are men is of personal significance to me because until this past year all my online friends have been mostly straight women.  Because I've lived with an alcoholic and also have used marijuana during my relationship and afterwards, my perspective on addiction and drug use is less ignorant and less critical than perhaps some of my friends online.  I think most people who haven't been caught by the darker path of addiction don't have a clear view of the hell of being tied to an addictive substance (and I'm not referring to marijuana which I have found to be helpful and non addicting).  Some of my friends do, however, have a clear idea of what it's like to be tied to mental illness.  In some ways, I see psychotic mental illness as similarly addictive, whether one suffers from schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or bi-polar disorder.  For schizophrenia sufferers, it is a thought addiction.  For schizoaffective sufferers, it is both a thought and mood addiction and for bi-polar sufferers it is mainly a mood addiction.  We, the afflicted, keep returning to particular and often ego oriented thoughts and moods; we get stuck there for a time until we right ourselves through medication, therapy, support groups and the individual application of some mental health program in our lives.  The way these things right us is through self-reflection, self-honesty and sharing our stories with others who have been through similar experiences.  This applies not just to mental illness but to addiction.

I have a strong respect for addicts, especially those who try to face and conquer their addictions.  I myself am a lesser addict because I still fall from time to time into cigarette addiction.  Of course, when addicts are actively using they are caught like a fly in a spider's web, stuck, struggling.  What frees them is sometimes hard circumstance (jail or hospital time) or some subtle yet powerful shift in perspective.  I have found with smoking cigarettes that I got so sick and tired of being chained to a smoke that eventually I took steps to free myself, but that happened after years and years of blindly using.  I did manage to make a break from my addiction, though I have had several temporary relapses.  Relapse is part of the addiction cycle.  If you're any kind of addict, I think you have to expect it.  The main thing is to love yourself enough to stop the cycle as soon as you're able.  Yes, I know there are those who quit and stay quit for decades and that's great for them, but for the rest of us there is a need for tolerance and compassion as we struggle up the stream.  The all or nothing attitude of many 12 step type people is not as helpful as they think it is.  What's key is having a stretch of sobriety and that's the hard part for many addicts because when you try to quit, you have to wish for it to be forever and that's a scary thought for anyone who is chemically dependent.  So initially you aim very high and work very hard.  That span of sobriety is such a relief when it comes; it shows that yes you can do it and your mind begins to clear and you begin to reflect on your life and get a better perspective.

I once met a man online 4 or 5 years ago who suffered from drug resistant schizophrenia and who was a recovering addict.  He called himself "good soldier" because that's what it's like when you're fighting the good fight, hanging out in the trenches, occasionally finding yourself in an open space with sunlight on your shoulders.  Mental illness is bad, but lay addiction on top of it and you really do have to be a kind of warrior: skilled, focused, tolerant and with a sense of humor.  And there are a lot of these warriors out there on the streets each day.  It's easy to call someone a drunk or a junky and sort of dismiss them as hopeless, but that's a viciously bad attitude, because the truth is the drunks and junkies who achieve sobriety (without stinking thinking) are like little heroes and heroines.  They've got both heart, intelligence and courage and I think they need to hear that more from folks who are blessed enough not to be chemically addicted.  I certainly count my blessings.  I know if I were ensnared by alcohol, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc... that I would be right down there in the pit with the best of them.  And I can also empathize because I have been in the pit of acute mental illness.  I've been to the other side;  I've been to hell, but hell is not all there is, though when you're in it, it feels like it.  I just think it's very important for those of us with mental illness to be respectful and protective of those of us with an even harder burden to bear, that of mental illness and physical addiction.

Going With The Flow: My Journals

Today I finished reading a book called Leaving A Trace:  On Keeping A Journal by Alexandra Johnson.  I bought the book for my Kindle because the reviews were good and because from what I read the author writes about taking journals and turning them into a memoir or fiction.  That's what sold me on it because lately I've been brainstorming about creating a book from my journals.  I have journals spanning the last 20 years all in a muddle in a large storage container near my diningroom table.  And so I am not at all organized, but I hope to begin to be, starting this month.  My original idea was to take excerpts from my journals and maybe write present day responses to them, first dividing the excerpts into themes such as Family, Schizophrenia related, Creativity, Life with an abusive alcoholic and so on.  What I didn't and perhaps still don't want to do is to write the standard novelistic memoir.  I see memoirs made out of reconstructed memories and actual fabrications as not genuine.  They are fiction/fact, which doesn't mean there aren't great memoirs written in that style; I just can't see myself right now creating dialogue out of a vague general memory.  I might be resisting it because I don't have the skill or talent to construct a story out of my life.  I don't know for sure because I haven't even attempted it.

I started writing in a journal in 8th grade when I was 13 years old.  It was what was to be my final year in a public junior high school.  The school housed perhaps two thousand students in grades 6th to 9th.  Much of the student population, if I recall rightly, was Hispanic and there were several gangs that subtly and not so subtly ruled the school, much to the chagrin of many teachers and students, including me and my friends.  We were in the rather vulnerable position of being in the top Advanced Enrichment (AE) classes which allowed us certain privileges such as being able to take our books home each night, go on overnight school trips to places like Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, work on yearbooks, participate in plays and generally be the favorites of the best teachers in the school.  We weren't particularly aware of these privileges at the time, we just accepted where we were, but here and there primarily tough girls from the local gangs would threaten several of the girls in our group.  The boys from our class escaped becoming targets mainly because they were avid basketball players.  Their love of sports created a bridge between them and the tougher boys, but the girls in our group had little in common with the violent, self protective, critical girls we would have contact with in gym classes and during lunch.  We also commuted about 17 blocks from another neighborhood.  The year before I had been popular with the boys and the girls in my class, but in 8th grade I stayed primarily close to my group of friends and we were all a bit distanced from the boys particularly because we were dealing with more stress than they were.

Anyway, it was in this atmosphere that I began writing in an ordinary notebook.  Rather foolishly I also began bringing the journal to school and writing in it there, letting only some of my friends read it, which led to some of my group imitating me and to conflict amongst us.  I would love to say that my journal was filled with insights and good descriptions, but from what I can recall I wrote pretty petty, complaining stuff.  I put down "the boys" and was critical of some of the "the girls" and was generally unhappy in school, though I was never chosen to be picked on by the tough girls.  I think this was because I looked particularly Hispanic even though I was 3/4 Irish American.  My first impulse to write was a way to take a stand, to voice those puerile opinions because they gave me the illusion of having some control over my life at a point where I felt rather helpless.  That helpless feeling only intensified as the year progressed.  We wound up as a group deciding to leave the school a year early.  There was a sort of random lottery for the better Brooklyn public high schools and I didn't get chosen.  Instead of going to my local neighborhood's lousy high school, my parents enrolled me in a private high school in Manhattan, much to my horror.  My sense of isolation grew as the school year came to a close and because of that I continued with my journal, bringing it to my new school the next fall.

As the years went by, journal writing became very important to me and I began reading other women writer's journals:  Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, Ettie Hillesum, May Sarton, Alice Koller.  I bought book compilations with excerpts from famous people's journals and diaries.  I bought books on journaling and creative writing.  The number of my journals began to grow.  I kept them in one box, then two.  I wrote during the rest of high school, during college and after college.  From time to time I would re-read my journals and feel a sense of continuity in my life.  Then at age 27 I moved seven hours northwest of New York City to a small college town and promptly got involved with a young man who turned out to be mentally ill, alcoholic and abusive; that's when the continuity in my journals stopped.  My boyfriend read some of my journals without my permission when I was away on a trip.  Several months into our relationship his abusive behavior began.  I had never been treated with such callousness and condescension.  Feeling helpless once again, instead of taking it out on him, I took it out on myself:  one day after reading through some of my journals, I became so disgusted with myself that I carried the several boxes of my journals from age 13 to 27 and I went to the local dump and threw them all away in a fit of temporary self hatred, which I shall always regret.

I didn't stop writing.  I wrote in secret and hid my journals in the house, but that precious sense of trust and continuity was gone and I wrote awkwardly.  I was living in an intolerable situation partly of my own making and I had to have some place to release my frustration, fear and anger.  I had to have someplace where I could keep in touch with a personal self honesty that was beginning to erode under the pressure of the cycle of abuse.  I left my abusive partner repeatedly and stayed with my parents and each time I did my journal began to blossom with self-reflection, only to have me return to him yet again and begin the destructive living pattern over again.  Finally, I left him for good and returned again to journal writing as a way to strengthen my resolve to never go back into an abusive relationship with him.  In my journals of those several years after I left him, but before I became psychotic, there is a certain toughness to me, a certain numbness and emotional detachment that I'm not sure I like, but that I understand.  There were a few indications of the illness that was to come, primarily certain romantic fixations that I didn't pursue because I was still too raw.  And then one day, I became crazy.

And I continued writing, sporadically at times, but I kept in touch with myself and ironically with my illness.  For three and a half years I remained inside my primary delusions and my journals of the time are obsessively fixated on them.  Insight shines out from time to time, but for most of it I am still quite lost.  I wrote in junior high school because I was in conflict with my environment, somewhat isolated even amongst my friends.  In high school, though I made a couple of friends, I would often keep to myself and my journal kept me company.  Isolation has been a theme for why I continued to keep a journal, isolation while with others and isolation while on my own.  I was always aware of being a separate self, on the periphery of society and normalcy.  Journal writing has been a life line.  When I was young, before I threw out my boxes of journals, I imagined them eventually becoming published and now I've come full circle, though in my heart of hearts I believe that the journals I threw away were somehow better than the ones I've since written and kept.  That may not be true, may just be the wear and tear of having lived a difficult life and internalized negativity.

So here I am again, with the equivalent of several boxes worth of journals in no particular order asking to be reviewed and taken seriously, covering my life in abuse, out of abuse, into psychosis and then in an extended recovery from psychosis.  I think it's a story worth being told, but as is true with all of our life stories, it's not easy to go back to difficult times in life and renew them once again.  And it is not just a matter of review, but of organizing and editing and responding, all of which takes careful consideration and time.  Right now, I have the time and I pray that I will continue to have the time to complete this ambitious project.  I've had several other ideas of how to approach this.  One is to read my journals from the beginning and keep a new journal to follow my progress through them, taking excerpts here and there and commenting on my present day reaction to my past life.  Another idea is to just start a new journal and continue with it for a year, writing with the intention of showing it to an audience, touching on different aspects, most specifically of my life living with abuse and with mental illness.  In any case, I am starting now and will continue to brainstorm throughout the process.  If anyone of you has suggestions, I would love to hear them because, once again, I am working from a standpoint of isolation and am in need of help.

Taoism and The I Ching

Paradox -- n. 1) a statement that sounds absurd or seems to contradict itself, but may in fact be true.  2) a person or thing that combines contradictory qualities.  (The Pocket Oxford English Dictionary)

Definition of "I" in "I Ching":  "The name I has three meanings.  These are the easy, the changing, and the constant."  (Understanding The I Ching:  The Wilhelm Lectures On The Book Of Changes by Hellmut Wilhelm and Richard Wilhelm)

Verse One of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu:

Transcending


The Tao that can be told
is not the universal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the universal name.

In the infancy of the universe,
there were no names.
Naming fragments the mysteries of life
into ten thousand things
and their manifestations.

Yet mysteries and manifestations
spring from the same source:
the Great Integrity
which is the mystery within manifestation,
the manifestation within mystery,
the naming of the unnamed,
and the un-naming of the named.

When these interpretations
are in full attendance,
we will pass the gates of naming notions
in our journey toward transcendence.

(translated by Ralph Alan Dale)


In the past couple of weeks I've returned to consulting the I Ching after many months away from it and I've made a new online friend who is a student of Taoism (pronounced Daoism).  Recently he asked me for my perspective on Taoism and it is logical that he should ask considering my blog is named Yin And Yang and I have written about the I Ching and its philosophy before here, but frankly I was at a loss as to how to respond to him.  I see myself more as a Tibetan Buddhist than as a Taoist and yet I feel a deep connection to the Taoist and Confucianist aspects of the I Ching, most especially the Yin and Yang symbol itself.  To me the symbol is a perfect representation of the potential and the actual balance in all life.  It uses the essential dualism of light and darkness and surpasses it in an ingenious visual combination.  It is organic in design yet a symbol and thus somewhat artificial.  In a sense it is a paradox.

When my friend sent me a link to a Taoist scholar's interpretation of Taoism, the first thing that struck me, after years away from studying any Taoism, was the paradox of the language and explanation.  This led me back to the most major text of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching, which is why I cited the first verse of the book.  The word Tao means literally path or way, but in the words of the scholar and practitioner Ken Cohen, it means "the divine life that moves through all things...Tao is everywhere."  So regardless of whether you practice Taoism or not, all beings are intimately connected to the Tao.  In typical and wonderful Chinese fashion the word has multiple levels of meaning that are all interconnected.  To follow the Tao, is to stay on the path, a path of harmony and natural sense, to stray from the path is to lose that natural harmony with all things.  The word Te means power or virtue and I believe the symbol associated with it is of a farmer in his field.  In that sense it has to do with both strength of character, simplicity, usefulness and harmony with nature.  Finally the word Ching means book.  So the Tao Te Ching means essentially the path of virtue book.

The Tao that can be told

is not the universal Tao.

The name that can be named

is not the universal name.

So here is the paradox:  if you can name it, conceptualize it, somehow pigeon hole it, then you've not truly understood what Tao is.  Universal means present everywhere, so if you see the Tao as one thing or at most several things, you are excluding so much of it.  It is "the divine life that moves through all things." It is similar in some ways to Moses asking the Judeo-Christian God's name and God replies, "I AM THAT I AM" and leaves it at that.

In the infancy of the universe,

there were no names.

Naming fragments the mysteries of life

into ten thousand things

and their manifestations.

In the beginning there were no names, no language at all.  Language is something that developed over time to make communication between human animals more efficient and direct.  It was also ironically a way to define and hold on to "the mysteries of life," but what it often does is to take some essential meaning out of what it chose to describe in this fashion, thus fragmenting it.  To say "I walked by a person" is to leave out the essence of that person.  To say "I sat beneath a tree" is to rob that tree of all its beautiful individualistic attributes.  It is to flatten and minimize life.  Yes, you get your point across in a bare bones way, but you do not get to "the mysteries of life".  Writers all over this world work damn hard to try to overcome that essential failing of language and a lot of times they don't get it, don't get the Tao of their subject matter.  The result is that instead of taking in the wonder of the full moon, people get hung up on the finger that is pointing to the moon and miss the point entirely.  And so language gives us "ten thousand things and their manifestations," but without the higher spirit that is contained within those things and manifestations.

Yet mysteries and manifestations

spring from the same source:

the Great Integrity

which is the mystery within manifestation,

the manifestation within mystery,

the naming of the unnamed,

and the un-naming of the named.

And yet language, too, is part of the mystery of life, part of the divine order, which is why despite its drawbacks it can be like magic.  This particular translator (and there are many) of Lao Tzu's verses, Ralph Alan Dale, writes of this verse:  "What is implied here is nothing less than the healing of the split between the two hemispheres of our brain which have become separated, alienated and at war with each other during the past few thousand years." (p. 9)  Left brain, logical and right brain, intuitive.  With the left brain we devised the system that is language, a manifestation of our human will and intelligence, but with the right brain we appreciate the subtleties of the sacred.  What came first in our human development?  Right brain, our animal brain, our lizard brain, our instinctual brain.  That's where the sacred lies, in the essence, in survival, in the immediacy of the present moment.  Very powerful stuff which is why in so-called primitive cultures animals become totems, spirit gods and goddesses.

Anyone who has been near wild animals knows the kind of respect that the experience engenders.  Especially potential predators: the bear, the panther, the elk, the alligator, particularly when they are with their young.  I've seen a bear outside my house twice and it nearly took my breath away.  It was a nervous kind of privilege to be so close to an animal that guards its privacy from humans most of the time.  The bear and I were both part of "the Great Integrity which is the mystery within the manifestation, the manifestation within the mystery, the naming of the unnamed, and the un-naming of the named."  My first impulse is to say "There's a bear!" but the next impulse is to really look at that particular bear and, from a safe distance preferably, really get to know that bear's essence.  The bear I saw defied the stereotype of some circus bear lumbering along.  This bear was quick, agile and acutely aware of my presence.  This bear was ALIVE, vital and mysterious all in one.  The name "bear" says nearly nothing of what the experience of being near the bear was like and yet the bear and the act of naming the bear are all part of the great whole.  

When these interpretations

are in full attendance,

we will pass the gates of naming notions

in our journey toward transcendence.

To be in "full attendance" is the goal of the Tao as far as I can see; it is to be fully awake, fully experiencing the present moment, which is why meditation is so important in so many spiritual practices. My Taoist friend, who is a very good meditator, has said that he can rest in the place and space of no-thought, watching, listening, feeling the "hustle and bustle" of the world go by him.  It is then that the dualism falls away and yet the paradox remains.  That very paradox, which can be so frustrating to understand on first glance, is the spice of life and well worth exploring, especially in this instant gratification world of ours.  

The I Ching generally is translated as The Book of Changes, but the I also means the easy and the constant.  Again, the paradox.  How can change also be constant, and yet we all know intuitively that it is, even as we resist the changes and go astray of the Tao, the path.  The practice is to go with the flow of nature, what in Chinese is referred to as Wu Wei.  This is what the I Ching tries to teach:  to stop when it is time to retreat or rest and to go when it is time to engage in life.  There is such harmony in that.  It is when we go when we should stop and stop when we should go that problems of the heart, mind and body occur.  This is what is meant by the easy, knowing with both sides of our brain when to act and when to not act.  This is the choice we're given and what a great privilege it is to learn it.

The I Ching combines both Taoism and Confucianism and both are concerned with ethical behavior.  The Taoist aspect, which is much older of the two, uses the symbolism found in nature.  The hexagrams, which are the six yin or yang (usually both) lines of the oracle are made up of trigrams, or three lines that are broken (yin) or solid (yang) and each of these trigrams represents eight combinations: Heaven, Earth, Thunder, Wind, Fire, Water, Lake, Mountain.  These trigrams also simultaneously represent the members of a family, mother, father, sons and daughters.  So there is both the organization of nature used to elaborate subtle truths as well as social organization within the family.  And there is more than that, but I'll leave those who are interested to figure the rest out themselves.  Just think, thousands of years (maybe five thousand or so) before the 0 and the 1 of computer language, there was the yin and the yang of this amazing Chinese oracle.  So rich in history and so flexible in meaning and so much a part of the Tao.  So this is "the journey of our transcendence" if we choose to follow it in one way or another.  

Small Business Ideas & Budding Friendships

I downloaded a book to my Kindle a couple of weeks ago.  It's called The Handmade Marketplace by Kari Chapin and it is a business oriented book on how to sell handmade work online and offline.  She takes the reader step by step through some of the basics of business practice such as advertising, blogging, podcasting, using social networks, setting up an online shop, selling to local businesses, doing the craft fair scene.  It's an overview to turn the serious amateur into a professional.  I bought the book because I was curious and because I really do want to earn some income this year, however small.  Ms. Chapin made it clear that there are lots of options for selling one's work (as long as the work is good quality).  It also became clear to me that in order to start a small business it takes a lot of effort and a certain amount of enthusiasm.  In addition to creating quality work you absolutely have to promote yourself to others and on a regular basis and that's something I have resisted.

So I've decided to start small, do a garage/yard sale in about a month.  I haven't had a sale like that on my property since I arrived over 20 years ago.  I've always been a very private person, to the point where I barely know my neighbors.  But if all goes well, I will try to lure people to check out my stuff.  This means I have to clear out the garage and organize it and make good signs to display outside my house and maybe along the road.  I will also be crocheting, making hemp jewelry and trying my hand at tie dyeing.  I don't know how far I'll get with that in a month, but I'm willing to try.  Ideally, I would like to sell my crafts from out of my garage during the warmer seasons, become an actual small business, have a professional sign made, but I don't know if it's legal yet.  I talked to my therapist about it and she said that she knew that she could have a business from her home, but she didn't know the particulars.  I have to do some research.

I'm going to need some help too from my brother and Richard.  I'm going to ask my brother to act as a bridge between me and potential customers because he's good with people, loves to talk whereas I am rather shy.  He might eventually get into making some of the tie dyes too.  I need Richard to help me clear out the garage and reorganize it.  I'm thinking about at least putting a coat of primer on the walls to lighten the space up more.  I'll need to buy a couple of tables and maybe a double clothes rack to hang up used clothing and the tie dyes.  And so I'll be spending a couple of hundred dollars on that, but I see it as an investment.  I also need to use one of the tables to do my tie dye work on in the garage, so that will be part of my shop.  The other half of it is in the adjacent laundry/kitchenette room.  I was going to try working out of my former darkroom, but the ventilation is so poor and the darkroom sink is not hooked up and there are all kinds of chemicals that have been sitting around for years in there.  Not appropriate right now, though I would like to clear a lot of the junk out of there so that I can use the space for some supply storage.

There are some local craft fairs that go on in the spring, summer and fall.  I won't be able to apply for them this year, but I can go and check them out and apply for next year.  Hopefully by then I'll be able to afford a good tent with four sides to it and maybe an outdoor storage house to keep my work clean and away from the cats.  The acid test is whether I can be successful at garage/yard sales, whether I can promote myself, interact with people, handle money, produce cool crafts and display them properly and get help from family and friends.  I honestly don't know if I can.  Somedays I'm all gung ho and others days I'm anxious and withdrawn.  I'll have to wait and see how much I get done this month.

On another note, on Friday I got a 30 minute audio tape from one of my best friends from my adolescence.  This past year we got in touch through facebook, but she works full time as a teacher, has two small daughters and a rather unhelpful partner and so she's been very busy and hasn't had time to keep in touch with me.  A couple of months ago I sent her a 60 minute tape telling her some of my story in a very honest and forthright manner.  I told her I didn't expect her to send me back a tape, but if she could swing it, I would love to hear from her.  And so now I have and it was wonderful to hear her voice after over 25 years with no contact.  I felt a bond with her right away because a lot of her voice and mannerisms were as I remembered them.  Of course, now she's older, wiser and tougher and yet still her own bright and sweet self.  She graduated from art school in the 1980s and has returned to her artistic pursuits off and on during the last 20 years.  Though her passion now is teaching and tutoring children, she says she wants to continue drawing again.  She mentioned a particular type of sketch/journal book that she particularly liked and was planning to get and so yesterday I bought her one and some drawing supplies and I will be sending out a care package to her early next week.

I have been blessed twice this past year and both through facebook.  First, when I reached out to an old friend from grade school and junior high school.  We have been exchanging tapes for months now and I love it.  And now with one of my best friends of my youth.  Living with schizophrenia these past almost 13 years, and even before that, has left me quite isolated.  What I had only dreamed about sometimes, that I would re-connect with old friends, has become a budding reality.  Living in the computer age has salvaged some of my relationships and also has allowed me to write this blog and connect with other great people online.  Though mental illness is still a serious affliction, access to the computer and the internet and medication takes quite a few of us out of the dark ages of permanent institutionalization.  It give us a voice and the means to be creative with what talents we have.

An Online Meeting And Thoughts On Music and Work

A couple of weeks ago I got a facebook friend request from a former neighbor.  We grew up together in Park Slope, Brooklyn in the 60s, 70s and 80s.  He lived across the street from me.  I didn't know him very well, but for one month, when I was 24, I had a month long affair with him.  He wound up breaking it off because he wasn't feeling good about himself.  At the time he said that I should be someone's sweetheart, but it was obvious he wasn't ready for something serious.  We continued to live on the same street for a couple of more years, which was awkward, but I didn't have any contact with him.  And so, I was surprised when he recently wanted to have contact with me again...but pleased, too.  Tom was and still is a musician and an actor, only now he teaches acting in the New York school system, has been happily married for over 20 years and has two talented daughters, both in college.  When I knew him, he was conflicted and, as he put it, "self loathing", but he bit the bullet and grew up into a well adjusted man.  He said that for 7 years he had a 9 to 5 job while his kids were young, but that after his mother died, he decided to return to music and acting and has been lucky enough to have a kind of freelance career going from school to school, doing what he loves.  So, in short, he is a real success story, especially for someone with artistic abilities.  

I learned all this about him through facebook emails, but, of course, I had to tell my story, which is not a success story, but a story of dysfunction, abuse and mental illness.  He did get to see and respond to some of my artwork and last week I gave him a link to the sample of my songs on the Soundclick site.  I listened to my CD from the 1990s again and that inspired me to continue working on some new songs.  I have an 8 track tascam portastudio which I bought a couple of years ago, but never learned how to use fully.  The reason for that was because after I had made up my CD for the first time in a decade and sent it out to several friends, I began having psychotic symptoms.  I thought the music was way better than it actually was and that I would hook up with other musicians and start a band or something, get noticed, etcetera.  Needless to say, that didn't happen.  My friends listened to my CD, enjoyed some of it and then put it aside, while I backed away from it.  In the last two years I have worked on a lot of new songs, but I never refined them, recorded them properly or shared them online.  When I thought of Tom listening to my music, I was excited at first because he is a songwriter and musician, but then I didn't hear from him and I started to come down to earth again and get practical.  I began to realize that my music is more for myself than for others, though I still have the desire to share some songs eventually online, but mainly with just a few friends.  

Tom did get back to me today and he said some very nice things about the music, but more to the point was that he had been busy with his own life, working, playing, teaching and performing.  I was pleased by his response and relieved because I didn't this time fall into psychotic symptoms even though I worked on and recorded two songs using my portastudio.  The songs I recorded didn't come out well, but I have to wake up and realize that making good music is not about instant gratification, it's about practice.  So I will slowly keep working on the music, switch off between that and my reading and writing.  

While looking for the owner's manual to the portastudio a couple of weeks ago, I came across some writing that I did in 2002 and 2005 that I hadn't remembered and began reading through it.  A lot of it was journal/ memoir related writing, but there was poetry and a couple of story fragments.  I was pleased with parts of it and want to type up sections and try to expand them into perhaps a chapter or a section of a chapter.  It is good to write and then put the writing aside for months, even years.  I may write about the same subjects over the months and years, but there's a fresh slant on each recollection and a deeper resonance.  A lot of creative work is just showing up and doing the work, but it is also reviewing, reflecting, re working the raw material.  Eventually your personality or voice shines through.  

I've also been thinking about getting back into craft work so that I can earn some money this year.  I'm going to learn how to make tie dyes.  I bought all the equipment for it a couple of years ago, but never went through with it, but now, with the downstairs done and providing a good work space, I want to try it.  And I want to make hemp jewelry and do some crocheting.  All this means that I have to shut the cats out of my work space, but it has to be done.  I've missed the craft work.  I used to do a lot of it while I was acutely psychotic and it was very therapeutic.  

Many thanks to everyone who has been posting comments lately.  I appreciate all of them.   Thanks for reading.   

Crossroads

I went out Wednesday to the dentist because one of my back teeth cracked in half and because I have infections on either side of my mouth.  I've had these infections off and on for several years.  For three years I wouldn't go to the dentist and deal with them.  That's very typical of people with mental illnesses, they don't get the help they need right away and put things off.  Sometimes such neglect leads to serious illness, even an early death.  So don't do as I have done.  This time, after my tooth cracked last Monday, I called the dentist without delay.  He gave me a prescription for antibiotics for 10 days and then I will return and he will remove my cracked tooth.  On the other side of my mouth, I need yet another root canal (I had one done last year along with other stuff), but he wants me to go to a specialist who is a 45 minute drive away.  I have to get my courage up to give the specialist a call and set up an appointment, though not until the weather gets a bit better.  The dentist said it was okay to wait a month and so I will.  For now, I have to chew on the left side of my mouth to avoid making the cracked tooth on my right side of my mouth any worse.  It's a bit awkward, but okay so far.  And I'm not in any pain, thank goodness.

Otherwise, I've been struggling with the usual:  moderate depression, bouts of anxiety, an increase of voices and isolation.  I'm not miserable, yet not quite content either.  I saw my psychiatrist last week and asked him if the voices will ever go away and he said no they wouldn't, unless some new drug gets created that eliminates them.  He said that he knows of several people as old as 90 who still hear voices, but who take their medication, get enough sleep, take care of themselves and are basically content.  He referred to them as "happy" psychotics.  I generally fall into this category, though as I said, sometimes I am not so content, but rather restless, down, anxious, etc...  Even so, there is enough good in my life that I don't get swallowed up by the negativity.  I also realize that we all struggle being alive, regardless of our level of mental health.

I can only afford to see my therapist every other week and this past week I saw her.  I told her that I was returning to working on my memoir, but that when I read through some older journals, my voices began to react against it and so I backed off and took a break from reading.  She warned me that I could return to acute psychosis despite the fact that I take the medications and go to therapy.  That woke me up a bit because I have somewhat taken for granted that I won't get really sick as long as I take care of myself, but taking care of myself also means not antagonizing the voices by doing things to create conflict within myself.  Still, I am stubborn; I feel the need to continue with the memoir, I just will go more slowly through the process.  Ironically the journals that upset me were not the ones from when I was deeply psychotic, but rather the ones from earlier on in my recovery when I was in school and caught inside a depression that almost made me drop out of school.  I kept returning to the theme of who the voices were and why they were here.  Some of that was interesting, but much of it was redundant.  I also blamed the voices for my unhappiness, which is something I no longer do.

It's a relief to not blame anyone or anything for my illness.  Part of why I don't is that I've come to see my illness as a part of a spiritual journey, thanks to Pema Chodron's view of Buddhism.  I know that most people who suffer from schizophrenia either see it as purely a biological illness, thus trying to distance themselves from their symptoms, or they are caught inside a resilient delusion of some sort that serves to explain the existence of the voices.  I believe that the illness has a biological basis, but I also believe that it is much more than that.  I believe that there are higher forces at work for all of us, but that those with schizophrenia are more conscious of the connection, for some reason unknown to me.  That is why in different cultures at different times in history those who we would now deem mentally ill were seen as shamans or healers with magical powers.  It's not an either/or equation.  It is not enough to say that we have a physical illness like diabetes that needs treatment, though this is true enough.  There is a rich psychological/spiritual element to the phenomenon of schizophrenia that I am not willing to ignore.  It's what gives meaning to my life.

But can I translate this perspective into a memoir?  I am at a crossroads.  I'm unable to narrow down my intent.  I have so much material to work with, years and years of journals and this past fall I began to seriously collect memories of my childhood and explore the facts of my parents, grandparents and great grandparents lives.  I know the process just takes time and that I must be patient.  And I know that when I get disturbed by some of what I find that I must back off for a few days or weeks and digest the new perspective.  But when I sat before my therapist and she said I might return to acute psychosis if I delved into my past, I almost believed her.  I'm convinced that part of the process of writing includes not only self questioning, but naturally, self doubt.  In order to be absolutely honest, I have to question my own assumptions, but I also have to rise above the doubts and press on, even if it takes me a decade to write one book.

Is it ambition or is it a desire to give succinct meaning to my experiences in life?  I think my desire to write a book is a desire to put a partial end to my isolation by opening my story up to other readers (if I'm fortunate enough to get published and read).  There are times when I have to count my blessings and not push it, but there are also times when it is healthy to give a little push here and there.  It is my psychiatrist and therapist's business to be cautious and many times I agree with them, but it is not a hard and fast rule.  There are no hard and fast rules in life because different situations and different people require different treatment.  The pain and beauty of life is trying to find that magical balance day to day.

Meditation: Letting Go Of Ambition

Krishnamurti, the Indian social critic and sage, says in the book Think On These Things that ambition breeds anxiety and "therefore ambition does not help to bring about a mind that is clear, simple, direct, and hence intelligent."  It is relatively recently that I've identified in myself the cyclical spurts of ambition.  I want to write a book and paint pictures and become a Buddhist.  I want to do something in order to be someone.  I don't see that in existing I already am someone.  In modern western culture we are asked at a young age, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  I knew I wanted to be some sort of artist.  Here and there I have embraced that intention, but I never committed to it for the long haul.  And so I have judged myself as not living up to my potential.  This is a subtle form of aggression towards myself, one that I share with many other people who aspire to creative success.  Krishnamurti also has said, "Is not ambition an urge to avoid what is?....Why are we so frightened of our loneliness, of our emptiness?"  These questions bring me back to the Buddhist practice of sitting with my discomfort, of not running away into one of the many ambitious activities I lay out for myself each day.

I have been meditating, but I am a restless meditator.  The nature of meditation is to face and accept the eternal restlessness of our spirits, to keep coming back to the breath, to keep touching and letting go of thoughts.  I used to see meditation as relaxation, and when I practiced it in conjunction with yoga, it often was deeply relaxing.   Now I experience it as more than a relaxation technique.  When I sit on my meditation cushion I try to imagine myself as an eternal witness, a breathing Buddha statue.  At the same time I resist that stillness.  I scratch my nose; I look over at the clock; I shift my legs.  My natural tendency is to react when I feel any discomfort.  This tendency has a long history, as long as I've been alive, and so it is no wonder that I am a restless meditator.

The fundamental nature of mediation is discipline; it requires the ability to both concentrate and let go simultaneously.  That sounds like a contradiction, but anyone who has meditated knows that it is not.  You let go into concentration; the concentration in turn lets go of all those restless urges to interrupt concentration.  You have to make the decision to do that.  Without a commitment, you will be caught up again in thoughts and desires.

Ambition is all about thoughts and desires and thoughts and desires are all about how we see ourselves, about our egos.  Buddhists describe the ego as a fixed sense of self, an unchanging "I", but the very nature of life and self is change.  Ego is nothing but an illusion; there is really no fixed and solid self.  Who I am now is not who I was last year or who I was as a young adult, or youth, or child.  In some ways that saddens me, as in the loss of the resiliency and optimism of youth, and in other ways I am relieved, as in I am no longer caught in debilitating delusions and paranoia.  Moving on in life frees me and confines me.  I am free to choose my direction in life, but confined by all the choices I've made to get to this point, confined by my karma.  I can transform negative karma into positive karma through consistent effort, but I can't change past choices or how those choices affected those around me.  I can only work with the fluid process and personal awareness I call, for convenience sake, my "self".

I struggle with the illusion that I have a fixed self and that that fixed self has to get somewhere else and improve itself in the process.  This struggle, this restlessness is counter to the aim of meditation, which is to be here now, to accept self and circumstances exactly as they are.  When I settle into a good zone within the meditation process, I feel peace.  It is then that I experience my own personal dignity and worth.  It is then that I have nothing to prove to myself or anyone else.  No wonder Buddhist teachers continually stress the necessity of including meditation practice in one's life; the goal is to incorporate the practice into daily life activities that go beyond the traditional seated meditation.  Meditation then becomes not some temporary isolated activity, but a way of being.

It is my wish that my meditation practice will grow and deepen into just that.  If I can be mindful of my moments, I believe I can let go of the restless quality of my ambition to become something else and instead rest mostly content with just being.  The real reason why I love artistic creativity is that when I'm in it, it is meditation and so I will continue to write, to paint and to make up songs.  I would like to write a book, but I want to change my attitude about why I want to write a book.  I still hold on to the idea that if I create a book, it will validate my existence, that it will give my life the meaning it presently lacks, but this is a grave misconception.  My life has meaning; it is the process of being and creation that gives it meaning and not the end products.  I am more than what I create.  The reason for creating anything is not self validation, but to help and give pleasure, maybe understanding, to others and to deepen the sense of our interconnectedness.