My Spiritual Life: A Journey from Childhood

I was inspired to write this post after reading about Tom Wootton, a man in his 50s who had been meditating since the age of 5. Tom would detach from his body and find himself floating above and looking down at himself sitting there. He intuitively knew that this and other meditative practices would bring him to a state of ecstasy. Altered states of consciousness soon became the most important thing in his life. It was only later in his practice as a monk that he found ultimate ecstasy after suffering from deep depression. Once he found ecstasy in depression he found it everywhere, at last finding equanimity. A deeply encouraging story for sufferers of stress, anxiety and depression and one that may resonate with anyone who has had childhood spiritual experiences which is more my own perspective although stress is also a part of my life at the moment.

Tom’s early childhood story is almost identical to mine. I was an extremely happy young child and the pleasurable altered states of consciousness that I was able to reach at this young age gave me, like Tom a profound state of happiness and a feeling of a spiritual closeness to a ‘God’ like entity

I loved to sit on my own in quiet solitude or silence, contemplating space, searching for meaning in objects or simply trying to remove any thought at all from my awareness. I embraced a God that my parents did not talk about. I craved quiet. In order to meet this need I adapted my routine to every situation doing things like memorising a single motorway bridge while in the car and keeping it in my minds eye as the sole focus of my attention until we reached the next one.

It was a very ordinary day at nursery school in my life as a 3 or 4 year old child, but it was also the day that probably changed my life forever as this was the day that I became ‘different’ The teacher was telling the story about animals. We were listening in silence and I was for some reason listening to the story with my ears while having my eyes focused intently on a drawing pin and finding I was enjoying the light headed sensation that the focus of my intent seemed to be giving me. The more I focused on that pin the more engaged with this story I became and the more light headed I became. The room rearranged itself into an animal, children and teacher kaleidoscope. Myself the other children and animals all joined each other to became part of the story and I had the sensation of being above myself and everything else. Everything was perfect, peaceful colourful and somehow seemingly interconnected and I felt very part of this. When I think of heaven this feeling is it. The next thing I felt was a jolt, The teacher was asking if I was OK and what had happened, and the morning carried on while I sat alone feeling confused.

This was not the first time I had had this experience, although it was something that normally came in the early morning, along with colourful floating shapes that drifted around my bedroom. I also used to bring the experience about to entertain myself. I believe the only reason I remembered this early experience so explicitly is because I was asked to describe it to various psychologists throughout my early years at school. The experience felt so natural and right that I feel sure it is not unique to me, and is common in young children who like myself just accepted it as normal but more usually forgot about it in later years. My memory of how to achieve such states possibly only still exists because of all the fuss that was made about my description of this one. It was the re-living of the experience that was disturbing to me and not the experience itself. From this moment on I ‘doubted’ myself. What was normal had become ‘abnormal’, ‘fanciful’ or just plain untrue, my life became a puzzle to be solved and I am almost certain that the self doubt that exists in other areas of my life exist because of this. The broken bits that Joe Bray refers to in his recent post. https://josephbray.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/broken-hearts-in-the-forest/ I would like to add that I have an ordinary life, run a business and have a family, have never used drugs or had any mental health issues.

As an adult I have gone through a period of stress and anxiety due to some major personal life changes. During this time I have re-discovered my spirituality, Meditation and some of my earlier experiences of altered consciousness. These are welcome and feel natural although the surrounding life circumstances are harder to live with.

This is a post for all sufferers of stress and anxiety, as well as those who as children were able to experience OBEs and other altered states. Please share your own story.

Read More about Tom Wootton: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bipolar-advantage/201207/how-i-found-ecstasy-in-depression

Spirituality: The path of the heart

Any path is only a path and there is no affront to oneself or to others in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you…Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question…Does this path have a heart? If it does the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.

Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan

One thing is for sure, If I had taken some notice of Don Juan after reading all Carlos Casteneda’s books when I was 15 I may not have ended up with the spiritual mess that I have made for myself. At the time the teachings seemed like just another entertaining story and not a metaphor for how my life should be. At 15 life was just beginning to look like it may hold more attractive possibilities than my childhood attachment to spirituality….after all, what had it brought me? Failure at school and 11 years of confounding the education system and several child psychologists

There is a story in the middle of all of this and if you read my earlier post Meditation, the art of pain suffering and joy. there is more on this.

Now thankfully I am back on the path of the heart. Back to what I believe in, which is really just simple truth, nothing more fancy than that. Part of my meditation practice is to walk a Labyrinth, a path I am using as a metaphor for my own life. My practice is to meditate in the Labyrinth until I reach single point consciousness (a term I came across by reading Thomas Campbell) Thomas CampbellI then attempt to walk the labyrinth maintaining this state of awareness which at the moment is impossible. At first I could not even get up of the bench without losing the feeling of elevation, now I can do the perimeter circuit of the labyrinth before having to stop to regain focus which is sometimes still not possible to do. I still have to regain focus around 10-15 times to walk the entire path as it gets harder as the circuits get shorter and turns more frequent.

This is yet another work in progress. I think of the labyrinth as my life, like any other path it is one where pain, sorrow, fear doubt and life in general will distract the continuing journey towards equanimity  making it necessary to refocus attention and from time to time reset the direction of the path itself after asking the question …Does this path have a heart? If it does the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use, and most importantly; do I believe in this path?

At this point to be really honest I have to say that parts of my life do not have the ‘heart’ that they should, yet for now I am knowingly still walking them, so yet more work in progress…also every change needs strength and I don’t have it yet.

One thing I do know is that if I walk a path that I don’t believe in that path will fail.

Would you believe it?

So far, it’s a bit heavy on the anatomy and physiology. It’s probably not necessary to know all of this stuff, but it does put what will follow in a context that is necessary in today’s world of evidence-based medicine. Until fairly recently authority and expertise were often enough to convince people about a treatment or technique. Nowadays it’s not enough just to claim that something works, you have to be able to support that claim. Or at the very least have a plausible mechanism to account for the claim. However, some of the techniques I will be offering don’t come with a handy placebo-controlled double-blind trial to back them up, and so we have to rely on our judgment and common-sense. Unless, of course, the proposed approach goes against common-sense!

It is important to keep our wits about us, but also to remember that the scientific method is very conservative by its very nature. This is one of its greatest characteristics.

However, we have to bear in mind that science is dominated by a very limiting worldview at the moment. I will discuss this in more detail later, but for now let me just point out that the scientific materialist view has many dogmas or creeds which are presented as scientifically proven, when they are actually articles of faith. A summary of this view is that matter (or energy) is the ultimate ground of being; there is no ultimate ‘source’, or intelligence, or compassion in the universe, which itself arose out of nothing and does not care for us; in turn, we are meaningless accidents of Darwinian evolution, and the universe is going nowhere, only to end in a slow heat-death, or collapse in upon itself again.

Let’s put this in its historical context a little.

The philosopher A. N. Whitehead said that ‘the safest characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’. One of Plato’s central ideas concerns ‘Forms’. For example a triangular folded napkin reflects the perfect triangle which exists as an ideal, independently of any triangular object. We can all imagine such an ideal triangle, and keep it in our mind’s eye. From that position the long tradition of Christianity, with its transcendent god and all the rest of it followed. There is a transcendent sphere where all the ideal forms, including love and justice and so on, abide.

To cut a very, very long story short, along comes science and drives a coach and horses through all of that, and we end up where we are now. Now there is no transcendent reality, no God in his (or her) heaven, and everything we experience is just a spin-off (an epiphenomenon, to be precise) of electrical signals going around in your brain. And all that just got here by some cosmic accident, with neither ‘Source’ nor intelligence underpinning it. And when you die, its lights out, game over.

Now the thing is, there is no more ‘evidence’ scientifically that this is true, than there is that Plato had it right. But it is presented to us as if it were a proven fact. And any phenomena which cannot be explained within that framework, or which challenge it, will be dismissed, refuted or ignored. Near Death Experiences, for example, are explained away as surges of endorphins in the dying brain or something of the like.

What I want you to consider is that there is a choice to be made between these two opposing worldviews. Do not take it on anyone’s authority which one of these views is the ‘Truth’. The churches and the scientific community are made up of ordinary people, each one of whom has to make up his or her own mind as to whether we live in a meaningless universe or one where we belong and are loved. The Pragmatist view (as expressed by the American psychologist William James) is that since we can never prove which is true we should choose the one which gives us most traction in the living of our lives. Indeed, the ideal might be to hold both views lightly and simultaneously. Of course, if your credibility or acceptance within a particular social group depends on your acceptance of their philosophy, your choices will be constrained.

This is the point: Some of the stuff you will be presented here with is not acceptable or permissible within the materialist worldview (such as telepathy, healing, the power of prayer, the law of attraction, etc), and if you cannot suspend that view for awhile, it will go right over your head. But as I said, let’s keep our wits about us: just because we wish something were true does not make it so.

In a Nutshell

Everything I’m going to tell you boils down to a few simple ideas. Putting these ideas into practice is what takes the work, but the dividends paid, while not  always immediate, are enormous.

• Take responsibility for your own development. We don’t become better, happier people by just hoping for the best.
• Learn to meditate. An unruly mind, which oscillates between Attention Deficit Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive just isn’t fit for the job.
• Exercise vigorously at least three times a week. Find others to exercise with and commit to them. Accountability to others is the best way to ensure we stick to the task.
• Eat healthily. Keep it simple, just get sugar out of your life and the weight will fall off you. Look at the back of the packet and see how much sugar it contains. If it’s more than 3 or 4 grams per 100, walk away. Don’t worry about fat content, that’s a red herring. It’s the sugar, especially when combined with fat, that does the damage.
• Eliminate negative thinking. This one is a full-time job.
• Consider some form of therapy. Even a few sessions with a good therapist can help you see some of your dark side, the hidden bits that everyone else thinks are glaringly obvious, but you can’t see. Patterns learned in your childhood can hold you back, limiting ideas your parents taught you.
• Develop strong faith. People often equate faith with belief. It is not necessary to belong to a church to have faith, and many people with strong religious beliefs have little faith. And faith is not something you either have or don’t. It can be strengthened with practice, just like learning the piano. At the beginning you won’t have much, and you won’t know what to have faith in. With practice you’ll learn what can be relied upon.
• Practise gratitude. Give thanks several times a day. This is often hard first thing in the morning, when you wake up with the black dog on you. But do it anyway. Eventually you’ll get good at it, and even start to feel it!
• Forgive. As with gratitude, regular practice makes it easier.
• Love the others who have been given to you. Remember some day you will be parted, and then it’ll be too late.
• See things from the other person’s point of view, in addition to  your own. Take as many perspectives as you can. Remember, just because it’s your opinion doesn’t give it an advantage.
• Get out of toxic relationships, whether at home or at work. Never let another human being persecute you, neither your spouse nor your boss.
• Get rich, become a millionaire. An old hippie saying has it that life is shit, but the more bread you have the less shit you taste. Don’t be ashamed of wanting to have plenty of moolah, backsheesh, filthy lucre. Only poor people say money is the root of all evil. Rich people who are nasty were arseholes before they ever had money. Money makes nice people nicer, and gives you the freedom to be creative and generous.
• Pray constantly. This means to live consciously as much of the time as possible. Show loving-kindness, forgiveness and gratitude. This is the way of Jesus, Mohammed and all the Buddhas of all the realms. You don’t have to join a religion to do this. Start  your own religion of one. This will give you a free pass into any church, temple or mosque in the world.
• Never  listen to naysayers. Have nothing to do with negative ideas, existentialism, nihilistic philosophies, militant atheism, or angry people of any stripe. They will only drag you down and make you feel frightened and angry. And when they tell you that they have ‘the Truth’, ignore it. Only you have the Truth, and since you get to pick your own, choose wisely.
• Put no head above your own. Think for yourself.
• Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe.

This is the start of it. Your Self-Development starts here…

My name is Dr Joseph Bray, and I have been a Consultant Psychiatrist for over 18 years. In case you struggle with the difference between a Psychologist and a Psychiatrist, the latter is a medical doctor who has specialised in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Along the way I have seen what works for people and what doesn’t. But it’s not just about mental illness. People who feel they are not achieving their potential and want to flourish can learn a lot from what modern science and the ancient wisdom traditions have taught us. This is a great time to combine the knowledge of science, tradition, philosophy and common sense into something that will allow you to tailor a programme to suit your own development needs. I’ll tell you about how and why things go wrong, and what techniques are useful, how they work, and where to access them.

Have you ever wondered how to get your life together, but didn’t know where to start? Doctors tell you one thing, complementary therapists something completely different. Scientists say one thing, New Agers another. Christianity says Jesus is the only way, Buddhists tell you to find your True Nature.

Should I vaccinate my children. Should I take antidepressants? What is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy?

Why do I feel so stressed all the time? Should I follow a religion? Or are the atheists right, that we are all alone in a mindless Universe?

How do I get rich? Is that a bad thing? Or should I just be happy with less? How do I tap into my creativity? What about diet and weight-loss? What is the role of sugar in my diet? Or fat?

How about exercise? What’s the best way?

What’s the most effective way to quit smoking? What is addiction? What about pornography?

What is a normal sex-life?

Over the coming months I plan to show you how to address these and many other issues. I hope you find something useful here, for yourself, and have a few laughs along the way. This is the start of it…