truth

I carry your heart in my heart.

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It’s a luminous room on the first floor of a Victorian building. The sun pours in from the big window facing the street. The delicate palm leaves throw artistic, dancing shadows on the carpet. I feel the tension in my muscles, the knot in my stomach and the tightness in my chest. Two comfortable black arm-chairs sit facing each other.  I am gently welcomed and ushered to the chair facing the window by a lady with a soft Irish voice and a sweet smile.

We sit down. I am relieved to catch sight of a box of tissues from the corner of my eye. I look at her and say my name. She says hers.  We hold the same belief – the soul is eternal. I ease into the chair and take a deep breath. I am open to this, whatever it brings. For now, I put my anxiety and scepticism aside. I tell her that I am here to find out if my son is at peace. He died by suicide at the age of 20, two years and 10 months ago.

She is sorry for my heartbreak. She shifts in her chair, turning and looking in the direction of the door. Her smile widens. I can only remember a fraction of what she said -“He’s so bright. So lovely.
Your relationship is sweet … special.
Does he play music?
West African drums?
He is not just a good drummer. He is extra-ordinary.
He has an eclectic taste in music. Super-creative!
He’s very proud of his musical heritage.
He’s wearing a long shirt, like a kurta.
He says he enjoys Celtic music too.
Recently a memorial concert was held for him?
He says he was there.
Is there a London connection?
He is showing me a cat sitting on his shoulder.”
She changes the direction of her body and aligns it to  me.
“You … are a writer. A healer.
He loves your writing.
He says it comes from the same field of energy as his creativity. It entwines your souls.
Your nutrition is very good but you suffer with severe stomach cramps. Your distress affects your digestion. You need to take lemon juice on an empty stomach every morning.”

She shifts again.

“The last year of his life was difficult. In his last few weeks the medications messed up his head real bad. He couldn’t think straight.
I see a strong army connection.
Your mother’s mother is there with Saagar. She tells me that your father is a man with great integrity. He has a big moustache. You have had a disciplined upbringing.

Saagar is surrounded by love. He wants you to know that you did your best. He wants to thank you for encouraging him to pursue his passion for languages and music and for not pushing him to do other things. He thanks Si for his patience and his friendship. He is impressed to see the commitment that Si has shown towards you. He is happy for you both.

He is offering me some rose petals.
Does that make any sense to you?”
Not sure, I say with an uncertain smile.
“Is someone’s birthday coming?”
Yes. Mine. In 10 days.
“He is also offering me a small bronze statue of Lord Ganesha. Does that mean something to you?”
Yes. I smile with tears of recognition.
“Would you like to ask any questions?”
Is he at peace?
“Not only is he at peace but he is joyful.”
Can you tell him I am sorry for not spending enough time with him and for not understanding the extent of his suffering?
“He feels nothing but love for you. Can you feel his presence?”
Yes.
“I know you have felt it for short periods of time, here and there in the past. I hope that with time you will begin to feel him around you a lot more.”

I can remember bits of that interaction but can’t comprehend the accuracy. How can a complete stranger know the intimate details of 3 overlapping lives? May be there is no such thing as death. Maybe we all exist together in a big pool of consciousness where different energies manifest in varying realms, like magnetic waves and gravity are invisible but they exist. Infrared and ultraviolet radiations are invisible to the naked eye but they manifest themselves in other ways. Maybe there is no such thing as death.

 

 

I am not my diagnosis.

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While I continue to struggle to figure out Twitter, forget how to update my website, get confused while recording podcasts, consistently get my innumerable passwords mixed up, stay oblivious about Instagram and Snapchat, the digital world gallops ahead.

Digital Interventions in mental health Conference 2017 was recently held in London. It explored topics across psychiatry, technology and culture to identify innovative ways of addressing mental health needs.

Dr Becky Inkster is a Neuroscientist, passionate about digital interventions in mental health, social media data analysis, genomics, molecular biology, and neuroimaging. She co-founded Hip-Hop Psych as she is passionate about working with hard-to-reach, disadvantaged groups and youth culture.

‘Views from the street’, ‘Prison transition tools’, ‘Beyond the bullets’ and ‘The Digital Psychiatrist’ are some of the workshops that were conducted at the above conference. The range of topics was rather fantastic. It was aimed at improving our understanding of how social media is helping to create and facilitate new spaces for mental health practices and support, exploring the benefits of social media and social networking to improve a sense of identity, self-expression, community building and emotional support through examining a few popular international examples. Participants and facilitators engaged in interactive sessions to understand how new tools for self-expression via pictures, videos, captions and short personal narratives can help break down the stigma surrounding mental health and perhaps even lead to more people seeking help. They explored how to empower young people to use social networks in a way that promotes their mental health and wellbeing, how to harness the power of social media to nurture mental health innovations that the future holds.

Impressive stuff. I carry on doing what I do. I write another article for the Huffington post – Darkness to light. I talk about my darling Saagar and emphasise the importance of us, the people, educating and empowering ourselves so that we can help ourselves and each other through the light of knowledge and empathy. I continue to speak with ordinary people living extra-ordinary lives. Here is a conversation with Sara Muzira, mother of the beautiful Simba. Both, mum and son are artists. She talks about the state of inpatient mental health services in her experience and things that can be made better for patients and their families. Thank you Sara.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 1000

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Living on the blurred line between reality and illusion.
Tasting the bitter-sweetness of all things.
Moving from the world of words to no words.
Letting the silence listen and speak.
Pure experience. It’s like this. This is how it is.
All existence in one realm. One love.
Death, the great leveller, swallowing all pride.
‘Forever’ sitting within the fold of Now.

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Mystic Love

When I seek peace, he is
The kindly intercessor,
And when I go to war,
The dagger, that is he;
And when I come to meetings,
He is the wine and sweetmeat.
And when I come to gardens,
The fragrance, that is he.
When I go to the mines, deep,
He is the ruby there,
When I delve in the ocean,
The precious pearl is he.
When I come to the desert,
He is the garden there.
When I go to the heaven,
The brilliant star is he…
And when I write a letter
To my beloved friends,
The paper and the inkwell,
The ink, the pen is he.
And when I write a poem
and seek a rhyming word-
the one who spreads the rhymes out
within my thought is he!
– Rumi.

Day 999

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The G Word

Grief is the normal and natural reaction to significant emotional loss of any kind. Grief is the mixed bag of conflicting feelings caused by the end of, or change in, a familiar pattern of behaviour. Grief is the feeling of reaching out for someone who has always been there, only to find when you need them one more time, they are no longer there.

The following statistics are heart breaking and could be avoided in many cases. Over half a million people die in the UK every year with an average of 5 grievers per death. That’s 2.5 million new grievers each year due to a death. Over 250,000 grievers per year due to divorce. This figure does not include the children grieving this significant loss. 25% of children in the UK are in single parent families1. By the 10th anniversary of moving in together just under 4 in ten couples will have separated. A Harvard study has found that when a husband or wife dies, the remaining spouse’s risk of dying is 66 per cent higher in the three months after their partner’s death.

Unresolved grief is everywhere.

Common myths about grief:

1. Time heals: Time does not heal. Time is an abstract concept – a unit of measurement that has no healing power. We know people who have waited 10, 30 or 40 or more years to feel better. However actions taken over time can heal.

2. Grieve alone: Often this advice is subtly implied “just give her some space” or “he needs a few minutes alone in the other room”. As children we learn that this means sad feelings should be hidden or experienced alone.

3. Be strong: Usually the griever is asked to be strong for others. “You have to be strong for your wife/Mum/children”

4. Don’t feel sad: This is usually followed by an intellectually true statement that is emotionally useless to the griever. “Don’t feel sad, his suffering is over” or “Don’t cry, at least you had him for 20 years”

5. Replace the loss: This is really common with pet loss or the end of a romantic relationship. “We’ll get you a new dog” or “there’s plenty more fish in the sea”

6. Keep busy: “If I just keep busy I won’t have to think about the loss”. This one is sad because some people spend their whole lives with this mentality and never get the chance to grieve and complete what was unfinished with the particular loss.

The G word – Guilt.

The word “guilty” is often used by a griever.
Griever: My son died alone, I feel so guilty.
Grief Recovery Specialist: Did you ever do anything with intent to harm your son? Griever: No, of course not (This is an almost universal response)
Grief Recovery Specialist: The dictionary definition of guilt is “intent to harm” and you didn’t do that. You are devastated enough by his death, please don’t add to it an incorrect word that distorts your feelings. Would it be more accurate to say there are things you wish had been different, or better or that you’d done more of?
Griever: Oh yes!
Source: ‘Guide to loss’ , 61 tips on grief:  free download from http://info.griefrecoverymethod.com/mainpage-ebook

Day 995

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A Path by the River

path-along-a-river-sergey-sergpinsky

(A path by the river: A commentary on modern spiritual search by D. Patrick Miller)

“As a journalist and reviewer in the field of contemporary spirituality I receive an almost daily deluge of books and other media that promise me accelerated enlightenment, total wellness, and sure-fire, karmically sanitised methods to achieve personal wealth and power. If even a fraction of these spiritual nostrums delivered the goods, my life would be a series of ever-brightening explosions of greater consciousness, finally culminating in the full flowering of affluent guruhood. That seems to be the American way of spiritual evolution these days.

Yet my spiritual life has never felt like a fireworks display of enlightenment-bursts building to a grand finale. When I picture it, my spiritual life looks like something completely different.

Imagine that you’ve spent years building a house to shelter you from the inevitable storms, deep freezes, and hot spells of life. The house is far from perfect; in fact most of the rooms seem to need remodeling as soon as they’re finished. But at least you’ve got a home of your own. Call this home the ego, or your normal sense of self, arduously constructed from the raw materials of the psyche following a haphazard blueprint based on your personal beliefs and experiences, your likes and dislikes, your hopes and dreams.

One day you’re sitting comfortably in the living room of your ego- home and the floor suddenly drops out to reveal a rushing river where you thought you had laid a firm foundation. Hanging on for dear life to a shuddering wall mantel, you realize that the house crashing down around you has become a mortal danger, likely to

snuff you out at any moment with a flying shard of window glass or a tumbling timber. Your only hope of survival is to let go of your familiar home, drop into the river and literally “go with the flow.”

This river is the onrushing life of the soul, which cannot be long hidden or confined even in the most spacious of homes built by the ego. Falling into the inner life of the soul is commonly called a spiritual awakening, and is usually precipitated by a profound crisis that shakes apart our usual self-serving foundations, the conventional ethos of “looking out for No. 1.”

But few of us can swim for long in the soul’s turbulent waters. Sooner or later you manage to struggle to the bank of the river and pull yourself onto solid ground, gasping for breath and wondering how you’ll survive in a strange new territory. After a while you may notice that the scenery ain’t bad from this new vantage point. You get to thinking that this might be just the place to build a new, finer house than before, in sight of the magnificent river but wisely removed by a few hundred yards. Who knows – you might even start a school here to teach river-rafting.

If you do stop here to rebuild a home for your ego, it will simply never occur to you that rivers tend to flood every now and then.

If you’re not focused on rebuilding a shelter immediately, you may notice that a footpath runs by the river where you dragged yourself onshore. In one direction the path will lead to the river’s source; in the other direction, to its destination. Without knowing how you know, you realize that the source and the destination of this river are the same, and it doesn’t really matter which way you head. And so you start walking. As the days stretch into months and then years, you learn to live a life in the wild following the river.

Sometimes the going is rough; you get lost in the underbrush, losing sight of the river and discovering that you’ve walked in circles just to get back to where you were days before. Sometimes the path turns muddy and steep, and you fall back two steps for every three you climb. Sometimes you slide into the river and get swept away again for a while. All these trials are part of the spiritual journey toward selflessness, the placeless destination that you started heading for the moment you fell out of the house of ego.

If you’re handy you may learn how to build yourself a canoe out of tree bark. But after a few days of coasting along the soul’s river – justifiably proud of your ingenuity and your determination to get ahead spiritually – you realize that it’s not really the speed of this journey that matters.

What matters is the seriousness with which you are following the route of the river. If you’re really serious, you’ll find yourself laughing pretty often at how ludicrous your situation is. Because regardless of your station in life in the everyday visible world – and no matter what anyone else thinks of you, whether they call you genius, guru, or fool – you know that you are truly an inward, homeless wanderer following a river without end for no reason you can practically explain. On this journey you’ll certainly never get ahead of anyone!

This is how I picture my spiritual life nowadays – stumbling uncertainly along a rocky path somewhere between the devil and the deep blue sea, pausing occasionally for attacks of helpless hilarity. Despite the wild rigours of following my path by the river, I don’t miss that old house I once built. When I think back, I remember how alone I usually felt within its walls. Sitting out by the river and watching its complex, ceaseless flow, I know that I am flowing there too, my soul inseparably mixed with all the souls who create the water of life.”