The Mind that can change anything

I wish that I could explain to people who think about taking, attempt to take, or do in fact take their lives that however bad it feels right now, it will pass. Things will get better.

I've a dear friend whose son took his life one evening when the hurdle he had to face (a new school year) seemed too much for him. Yet, with some tweaking of various elements of his life, mainly expectations, he would have gone on to have had many happy decades of life, I am sure. He was a gentle boy, very bright, and he'd have made a great contribution to this world, without question.

It's so interesting how the circumstance of one's life, which after all is just an illusion manufactured in the mind, can rise or fall on such little things, and so it seems to me that if we could just say to those desperate souls who decide to check out, especially at early ages, that what appears black today could tomorrow be a vibrant yellow.

It has been over two years since this boy took  his life and I have wondered if his mother would ever get over it. Well, I know she will never be the same woman, but would she one day wake up and be glad to be alive again? This, I have wondered.

For some time I was concerned that she too would take her life to be with him, something she said she wanted, but in more recent times she has assured me that she would never do this. A medically trained person she believes in the sanctity of life and she just couldn't do it, she said.

Still, she has also talked of 'living a nightmare' and I have tried a few different things to shift her thinking. Particularly intelligent and not remotely spiritual or religious, there are limited options. I suggested a psychiatrist to get at those thoughts and challenge them, but she's the one to take this step, not me, and I don't think she's ever going to do it.

What to do? Well, she's a woman who loves a bone to chew and she's good at what she does, so I put her onto my mother's health and in time she had that situation sorted with names of the just the right professionals. She won't answer emails about her own pains but she'll gladly write away to come to the aid of someone else.

I wanted to do something for her to say 'thank you' and it occurred to me that music might be a sort of medicine, so I gave her two tickets to a Parisian Jazz Concert in town for just one evening. She took her sister and with excitement emailed the next day to say how wonderful it had been; how the audience had cheered and applauded and stood up and danced in the aisles, including her sister. It gave her a boost like nothing else I had tried had managed to do. For one night at least, she had loved life again, and maybe, just maybe, it might turn things around for her.

She talks to her son often. She still sleeps in his room to be close to him. She knows he visits, which is troubling on one level but also sorta wonderful that this totally scientific and rational woman can be reunited with her son in this way. She blames herself for the sadness that took his life, even though she was a totally devoted mother, and she feels a need to care for him in death as well. She's the child of survivors of Auschwitz. Who am I to tell her how to live and how to think?

In moments when I glimpse the vibrant woman I once knew it feels to me that anything in this world is possible, and so when she dropped off into my letterbox a CD that they were selling that night enclosed in a beautiful card I felt a deep sort of reverence for the art of 'companioning'; of walking side by side with someone who was walking through a deep, dark storm. I can't pretend to feel her pain but I can continue to reassure her that living a nightmare won't last forever. The mind truly does wish to heal.

If you think about music it is an extraordinary gift to the planet. A set of notes is written and learned. They are played, last a few seconds and then they disappear, and yet they can change our mindset; change our lives in fact; change the state of someone's world. A set of notes can remind us that there is much to live for; that man is capable of creating abundant joy. Music is therapy. Music is life. If they try to drop music in your children's school, fight for their rights to experience joy.

The power of the mind

There was a little kernel of truth that was discussed briefly at the retreat and it has stayed with me. The man who lead the retreat, a name well known to Australians, made the comment that "the mind focuses on what has the most energy". If you are told 'don't think of a white horse', what do you do? Well, try as you might not to think about a white horse, your mind goes to the image of a white horse. The mind "takes the target".

If you say to  a child "don't jump in the puddle", the idea of jumping in the puddle becomes irresistible. The woman at the retreat whom I referred to as Rachel in a previous post said to me that she tried this with a friend whilst out walking. They were crossing a  shallow pool of water via a log and once across she turned back to her friend and called out, 'Don't fall in!'. Right on cue, the friend fell off the log and into the water.

So, the message is don't talk to people about what not to do but rather give them a positive direction. If a friend  or loved one is obsessing about a person who no longer wants to be in their life, the message is not to tell them to 'stop thinking about him/her' but rather to think about something else.

In the same vein, there isn't much positivity in thinking about what you don't have, or can't have, but much positivity to be had in finding a new direction or focus or interest. As someone who likes all her important relationships to be 'tickety-boo' and who feels held back when they are not in good order, I find it helpful to focus on something else and often times, that's my relationship with myself.

King writes about the power of the mind and how focused thought can get you where you want to go. I recommend you read the article for a full understanding but let's focus on this thought late in that article, that "The real power of focused thought comes from the amount of emotional and physical energy it generates."

When I feel a little removed from the love in my life, even knowing on a rational level that there is an abundance of it, I take myself to my cushion in order that I may explore that emotion. What word would I use to explain this feeling to myself? Hmmm, perhaps 'lonely', or 'isolated' or 'distanced' or 'frustrated' or 'confused'. I don't deny this feeling(s). I go straight into the feeling and I feel it intensely; deeply. This little exercise often lifts the feeling and transforms it to something else. I mean, it's a silly thought. I'm loved, I'm really quite sure of it, and I love, without question. Sometimes, it is vexed and troubled in my mind, but the love exists regardless of the state of it at that moment when I experience some sort of disturbance in the flow of it, either way.

There is a little trick to experiencing the state of bliss that I discovered one Friday night several years now. At the time I was attending a meditation/discussion gathering of people on a Friday evening. We'd talk about some philosophical issue or other and we'd have a couple of short, say, 20 minute meditations. I can't remember what led me into this meditation but I found my mind surveying the important people in my life. As I surveyed them, that is, looked on them from afar, as if I was in heaven and had some sort of vehicle to get from one to the other, I felt this very deep wave of love for them wash over my whole body. I was awash in feelings of love going both ways, from me and to me, and as these feelings gathered I found I had collected an enormous pile of love. My cup runneth over and tears gushed down my face, some landing on my neck and shirt. I had, without direction, hit onto the state of bliss.

We talked about bliss at the retreat and the man leading the discussion, let's call him Ewan, said one day, 'You don't want to get stuck in bliss'. Of course, we were far too devoted disciplines to question this, but his wife, a devotee to be sure but not at all afraid to question him, said, 'Well, Ewan, I can think of worse place to get stuck!' and of course, we all laughed. ''

Of course, bliss is a sort of thinking state. This is what he meant. I conjured this state with my imagination, or with my thinking mind. Still, it is indeed a wonderful state, and I'd recommend it to those who are struggling with relationships at any point of time. There is a fabulous surge of 'feel good' feelings that light up the whole body and remind us how good it is to be alive and how lucky we are to have certain people in our lives.

When the focus is on 'that loving feeling' so many other complicated thoughts tend to lose their oxygen. Empathy flows. Those matters that disconnect from others become much less important in the moment and for some time thereafter.

It's not Thanksgiving here but rather that period of time when the weather is in flux and causing no small amount of trouble - earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, and high pollen counts in Melbourne causing serious and sudden bouts of  severe hayfever and asthma. Still, I am aware that most readers of this blog are Americans and I therefore wish you a happy Thanksgiving Day, a favourite day of the year when I lived there with my young family.

I found myself ranting last evening after I had watched the news. This is unlike me, but news of Trump tends to makes my bile rise and then I find myself angry. I guess we shouldn't be shocked at Trump's behaviour any more. What you see is what you get. I don't know why we were ever confused about that. Comedians and satirists generally now admit that thinking about him in any other way was not helpful. Why I was surprised he called the media to task in a meeting and openly complained about any reports against him I just don't know, except it is a new one on me in a democratic country such as the United States that has accepted free speech for quite some time. Thanksgiving conversation, if based around such topics could be tough if there are disparate views at hand. It is not likely to be easy. May feelings of love towards those in the room be your guide as to how the day goes. Focus your mind on what you want to achieve at the end of the day. Give it your best shot.

Awareness of the good stuff

These are the hallmark characteristics of a person who has OCPD, which stands for Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder:

1. A preoccupation with details, rules, and schedules to the point in which any joy in the activity is lost.
2. A sense of perfectionism that interferes with getting tasks accomplished.
3. Friends and family members play a second or tertiary role in life.
4. Excessive rigidity and stubbornness. 
5. Over-conscientiousness and inflexibility about his or her values.
6. He or she resembles a hoarder. 
7. The person often can't let others work for him or her because they often don't meet his or her standards.
8. An unhealthy use of money -- often excessively hoarding money or being miserly.

In one form or another my husband has hallmarks of all 8 indicators of this type of personality, which is why I have encouraged him to seek help for a mind that is working overtime.

Of course, he hasn't done that and he won't ever do that, but this morning, he did indicate to me that he has some personal awareness of what I am saying to him. Naturally, as expected, he felt there was good reason to determine that only he has the wherewithal to do most of life's tasks himself, but he did acknowledge that I perceived the situation as such that it appeared to me that I was being neglected.

I stayed completely calm. Truly. I don't expect different sorts of responses to the ones he gives me. I know that the condition is deeply entrenched, in some ways genetic and well established in childhood due to his upbringing and life's circumstances at the time. I was simply appreciative of the fact that we were talking about it in a civilized fashion.

Once again, I said it was unfortunate that he refused to seek help to deal with thoughts that were not serving him well. However, if I was forced into the role of healer (it's either that or watch him stew in his soup without hope of living with a happier partner) I said that I'd like to start with one simple strategy. Only one. Each day I would ask him to tell me one thing that had made him happy or joyful that day. Had he enjoyed the taste of a particular food, heard a bird singing on the walk through town; been lifted up by a conversation with someone; enjoyed a memory; felt gratitude?

I'm going to focus on tipping the scales in the direction of joy and happiness, of living life well, because although Malcolm Fraser brought into our everyday vernacular the phrase, 'Life wasn't meant to be easy', truly, there's no-one who ordained that it should be hard either.