Yesterday it rained all day, unusual in Wisconsin, and it was hard enough and cold enough that we gave up our daily walk. By dark, which is now 4:30 with a cloudy sky, I was feeling the anxiety, the antsiness of confinement long known as cabin fever. That's November for you. SAD approaches, again, to hopefully be broken by the incoming snow this afternoon and tomorrow's glittering brightness.
This morning while cooking an omelette, I heard an add on the radio for anxiety. It promised a bright and sunny disposition without prescription and without negative side-effects. The add is right on cue for SAD and I suppose they'll make their money, but I know: it ain't gonna work. There are lots of things that temporarily elevate mood, but they are all temporary and some have very negative side-effects. You can't run and hide from anxiety.
Vos Savant, the highest IQ woman in the world who also writes for Parade Magazine, had her entire Sunday column on hypnosis and getting rid of unpleasant memories. Yes, she said, some can do this, but the changes to the brain from events are chemical in nature and cannot be whisked away. The changes and the unhappiness or anxiety they cause continue, only the conscious mind no longer knows why. There are lots of caveats to this equation: sometimes, for instance, physiological changes cause the subconscious to produce images that mock real-life events. We might even believe that they are real, but they have been produced from some biological abnormality. For me, if I have too much alcohol, I get nasty anxiety dreams. I suppose it is a Godsend, as it keeps me more moderate, but I do not feel the gratitude at 3 in the morning. Regardless, she is right in that we cannot sweep our problems away with a magic wand.
However, the pivotal point seems to me to be how we view events, not so much the events themselves. In the hexagram "Keeping Still," the I Ching states: "If the movement of the spinal nerves is brought to a standstill, the ego, with its restlessness, disappears as it were. When a man has thus become calm, he may turn to the outside world. He no longer sees in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore he has that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them." In the Gospels, Jesus tells us, "not one moment more of life is brought to a man through his worries." (my paraphrase) The upshot for both is that we have to still the ego to still anxiety. For the East, this is done through meditation; for the West, through contemplation (much the same thing) and/or faith. What was the Serenity Prayer? Give me the wisdom to change the things I can and live with the things I can't and the wisdom to know the difference, or something similar.
Easy to say - we must see how calm we are when awaiting a major surgery or cancer treatment. The test, then, is strong, as strong as the world and our bodies and minds. Which is the way it is supposed to be and must be. If true calmness or faith were to be had from a simple prayer or magical trick, it would be like pestering Dad for a new bicycle for Christmas. We would not ever be compelled to rise above a dimension of being that is seriously near-sighted. We are gnawed by anxiety and fear to compel us out of our flat, limited reality, for nothing is harder than keeping the mind still. And yet nothing is more motivating than extreme fear or pain.
When it is said by the religious that we are never given more than we can handle, I have to scoff. People fall all the time, and sometimes they never get up. Few of us can handle the worst that can be given us in this life, as we are, but that is where the wisdom lies, where the axiom speaks truth. We must either be silenced by the most extreme discipline of meditation, or really, truly have the faith to silence our worries for us. Yes, life is a test, and like the November gray, we can't make the bad stuff go away no matter our money or power. The seasons and our fortunes and health change. We must, one way or another, learn to ride above them or suffer the torments of our panicked selves. It is the way it is, and we have been given the ways out - but as long as the sun shines, few of us ever take them. Thus the rich man is a camel passing through the eye of the needle. Thus every well-fed, healthy and happy person is a rich man. Thus, we are given the most we can handle and then some, that which we can only handle with the help of the sacred, of the god within Self, or of the god who sacrifices for us rather than the one we sacrifice too.
It is, in the end, an all or nothing game, this life. We are compelled sooner or later by the utmost extremes to see the folly of our own power in its frightful grasp. Simple but pure faith or hard-won asceticism, either way, we can alter the chemical changes to our brain, override that which we are told cannot be overridden. We have been given both the the need and the ways to rise above the practical mind, even that of the most intelligent woman in the world. FK
This morning while cooking an omelette, I heard an add on the radio for anxiety. It promised a bright and sunny disposition without prescription and without negative side-effects. The add is right on cue for SAD and I suppose they'll make their money, but I know: it ain't gonna work. There are lots of things that temporarily elevate mood, but they are all temporary and some have very negative side-effects. You can't run and hide from anxiety.
Vos Savant, the highest IQ woman in the world who also writes for Parade Magazine, had her entire Sunday column on hypnosis and getting rid of unpleasant memories. Yes, she said, some can do this, but the changes to the brain from events are chemical in nature and cannot be whisked away. The changes and the unhappiness or anxiety they cause continue, only the conscious mind no longer knows why. There are lots of caveats to this equation: sometimes, for instance, physiological changes cause the subconscious to produce images that mock real-life events. We might even believe that they are real, but they have been produced from some biological abnormality. For me, if I have too much alcohol, I get nasty anxiety dreams. I suppose it is a Godsend, as it keeps me more moderate, but I do not feel the gratitude at 3 in the morning. Regardless, she is right in that we cannot sweep our problems away with a magic wand.
However, the pivotal point seems to me to be how we view events, not so much the events themselves. In the hexagram "Keeping Still," the I Ching states: "If the movement of the spinal nerves is brought to a standstill, the ego, with its restlessness, disappears as it were. When a man has thus become calm, he may turn to the outside world. He no longer sees in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore he has that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them." In the Gospels, Jesus tells us, "not one moment more of life is brought to a man through his worries." (my paraphrase) The upshot for both is that we have to still the ego to still anxiety. For the East, this is done through meditation; for the West, through contemplation (much the same thing) and/or faith. What was the Serenity Prayer? Give me the wisdom to change the things I can and live with the things I can't and the wisdom to know the difference, or something similar.
Easy to say - we must see how calm we are when awaiting a major surgery or cancer treatment. The test, then, is strong, as strong as the world and our bodies and minds. Which is the way it is supposed to be and must be. If true calmness or faith were to be had from a simple prayer or magical trick, it would be like pestering Dad for a new bicycle for Christmas. We would not ever be compelled to rise above a dimension of being that is seriously near-sighted. We are gnawed by anxiety and fear to compel us out of our flat, limited reality, for nothing is harder than keeping the mind still. And yet nothing is more motivating than extreme fear or pain.
When it is said by the religious that we are never given more than we can handle, I have to scoff. People fall all the time, and sometimes they never get up. Few of us can handle the worst that can be given us in this life, as we are, but that is where the wisdom lies, where the axiom speaks truth. We must either be silenced by the most extreme discipline of meditation, or really, truly have the faith to silence our worries for us. Yes, life is a test, and like the November gray, we can't make the bad stuff go away no matter our money or power. The seasons and our fortunes and health change. We must, one way or another, learn to ride above them or suffer the torments of our panicked selves. It is the way it is, and we have been given the ways out - but as long as the sun shines, few of us ever take them. Thus the rich man is a camel passing through the eye of the needle. Thus every well-fed, healthy and happy person is a rich man. Thus, we are given the most we can handle and then some, that which we can only handle with the help of the sacred, of the god within Self, or of the god who sacrifices for us rather than the one we sacrifice too.
It is, in the end, an all or nothing game, this life. We are compelled sooner or later by the utmost extremes to see the folly of our own power in its frightful grasp. Simple but pure faith or hard-won asceticism, either way, we can alter the chemical changes to our brain, override that which we are told cannot be overridden. We have been given both the the need and the ways to rise above the practical mind, even that of the most intelligent woman in the world. FK
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