Amritasukha shares his experience of being an Order member living with severe anxiety
Amritasukha, thank you for taking part in our conversation about mental health and the Order. Can you start by saying something about your ‘life before Triratna’?
At around age 12 I started to realise that what the other boys were starting to show interest in (girls) wasn’t what I was interested in. I liked the other boys, and I seemed to be the only one. This had two consequences. Firstly, it was a slow, emotionally painful, and solitary realisation that, in those days, not getting married meant no children, no reason for a mortgage, so why bother with a career either?
It all seemed like a game, a meaningless, pointless game to while away the years and I had no alternative. How was I going to kill time between now and when I died? Other people in their mid teens might have had better emotional skills to deal with it. I was probably doing the best I could.
Secondly, I was scared of being outed and kept my head down until college. At that young age I didn’t have a sense of any way forward - there were few exemplars – and I thought ‘whatever it is you want, you won’t get it’.
This had an enormous impact on my self confidence and self worth in education, work, travel, love, and produced lots of anxiety. I decided I may as well engage with other things such as green politics and alternative communities. I also wondered how human minds work, especially my own, so I did a psychology degree.
How did you come across Triratna and what impact did that have on the intense anxiety?
I was so anxious about the first year exams at college that I hardly slept for two weeks. I decided I needed to get a handle on it. I tried meditating with one group and eventually stumbled upon the FWBO, as it was. I remember knocking on the door of the Manchester Buddhist Centre and being greeted by a blast of Suvajra’s warmth and friendliness, possibly the most significant 30 seconds of my life.
I thought that the metta bhavana would solve my lack of self confidence and self worth, and, initially, it made a positive impact. The first three years of meditating were very pleasant. During my first retreat at Vajraloka, I was in dhyana every time I sat to meditate and that carried on for another 6 months until a Padmaloka winter retreat. The retreat started off with bliss but one day I woke up and it stopped completely, for no obvious reason.
From then on meditation was a slog. Each time I sat I started to lose sense of my emotions first, then my body and eventually my thoughts (technically, this is called dissociation). I had to use willpower just to stay awake. Things picked up a bit on retreat but even then it was downhill, even at Vajraloka. Things improved a lot on the ordination retreat but I was having difficulties with the metta bhavana, and the six element practice was the most effective and quickest way of becoming completely disembodied!
What happened after ordination?
After the ordination retreat it only took a few days for meditation to become numbing once again. I remember going on a first year reunion retreat where we did the prostration practice. Something was not right about it. I decided to drop the images and there was nothing there, no sense of presence, no figures, no white light, just this strange physical and vocal exercise.
I struggled on for a couple of years and went back to Vajraloka in 1997 with the thought ‘if they can’t help me sort it out, I’m going to stop doing it’. They told me they didn’t know what to suggest. I admired their honesty. It was a relief to stop meditating, although I started to wonder if I had ‘failed’ as an Order member. However, without those deadening 40 minutes in the morning I felt more alive.
Yet that sense of meaninglessness returned...
Yes, I carried on for a couple of years at Windhorse Trading and then, very gradually, for no apparent reason, I began to slide into that old, familiar sense of meaninglessness. At the time I wondered ‘how could practising the dharma lead to this?’ I couldn’t bear to read dharma books, listen to dharma talks or go on Order events. Work, community life, being in the Order, all seemed completely pointless.
I tried to speak to a few people about it but was left deeply dissatisfied. I’m sure most people were doing their best, although some people looked as if their response was unconscious horrified anxiety. It seemed wiser not to talk about it. After dabbling in NVC, I realised I wanted to be listened to, and helped to clarify what was going on. However, those communication skills aren’t that common.
An old friend managed to persuade me to leave Windhorse, it was the best thing for me to do at the time. However, it took some years before I acknowledged I couldn’t deal with these issues on my own; I needed professional help. I was fortunate to see Atula. At our first session he said that, if I started to see him, I’d have the worst day of my life. He was wrong, it was the worst 6 months of my life! It was so painful I would go to bed hoping that I wouldn’t wake up again. Through seeing Atula things started to brighten up, but it’s taken far longer than I expected.
Have you found a way to meditate?
When I had a sitting meditation practice, I wasn’t able to do it in a way that wasn’t harmful most of the time. It’s been largely absent in the intervening 24 years. I’ve tried lots of other things NVC, EFT, shamanism etc, and they’ve usually had a little bit of an effect. All this has been complicated by having ME/CFS for over 10 years.
About three years ago, I thought I’d give mindful walking a go and, in it’s own quiet, slow way it might be the most effective thing I’ve done so far. I walk for about an hour a day, on my own, in the relatively quiet streets and woods around where I live. Most of the focus has been on gently, repeatedly, returning to body awareness. This has made it much easier to distinguish bodily sensations and anxious or irritable thinking. With walking, the body sensations are so much stronger than when sitting so they are easier to notice and return to, and to let go of the physical tension.
I’ve started to experience the movement of energy up towards as it turns into full blown anxiety that sustains the lack of self confidence and self worth. Gently returning to bodily sensations slows or stops this energy from turning into the anxiety. So there is less anxiety, more confidence, and some of my other views are changing. Maybe I’ve needed this kind of grounding in bodily awareness for a long time.
How is it for you now being in the Order? Doing puja? Chanting?
I get tense chanting mantras or spiritual exercises that require imagination, and I can only do a few pujas before the emotions seep away. I’d like to find some effective ways of bringing some peace and goodwill into my life.
I’ve often felt in an awkward position; the dharma, in theory, makes a lot of sense, I value a lot of the aspects of the sangha but I don’t participate when there are so many shrine room activities. When you’d like to be part of a community this can be difficult and a bit painful.
I’m sure some of you reading this might think ‘all that sounds like trauma’. In the last 20 years there’s been a lot of research into trauma and meditation. I wish it had been about when I’d started meditating as it might have made things easier to understand what was happening to me, why, what to do about it and what not to do.
The meaninglessness hasn’t entirely subsided, in fact, it seems to gently colour much of my world view. I have a vivid sense of ageing, sickness and death, but little of the Fourth Sight.
The more I think about this whole area, the less certain I am about any boundary between a ‘mental health’ issue and a ‘spiritual’ one.
Thank you Amitasukha. I appreciate your willingness to share something of your experience and I imagine a number of Order members reading this will relate to what you have described, and benefit from your openness.
The Abhayaratna Trust supports Order members to access mental health resources, such as psychotherapy, CBT, EMDR and counselling. If you want to get in touch for signposting, wellbeing grants or to share your story, in the first instance email Taradakini@abhayaratnatrust.org or message her on (+44) 07857 351818.
Visit our dedicated mental wellbeing page here