Category Archives: Pain

Legs

Posted on by Leave a comment

I am a limper.  I limp more than most people.  In my younger days I was always spraining an ankle.  High school football marked the start of my knee adventures when I partially tore my anterior cruciate ligament.  I was born with chondromalacia, meaning my kneecaps are somewhat askew, leading to arthritis at a relatively young age.  I had arthroscopic surgery on my right knee in my late 40s.    

In the meantime, I hiked, hunted, backpacked, played killer volleyball in the Army, and climbed over twenty fourteeners, mountains over 14,000 feet elevation.  I always experienced some pain during all that, but I just kept on truckin’.   

Sunshine and Redcloud Peaks

It all changed when I climbed Sunshine and Redcloud Peaks in the San Juan mountains.  It started as a fine day in country mostly new to me.  A great climb, with a lot of time sharing  the alpine tundra with the resident Pika.  It started clouding up as we dropped down from Sunshine on the way to Redcloud.  On the summit of Redcloud we were in a whiteout with horizontal snow.  We got scared when I took my hat off and my hair stood on end, what there was of it.

We headed down as fast as we could, having experienced lightning above timberline before.  People die that way.  We moved straight down, sort of loping down a scree field.  By the time we reached timberline I was hobbling, both knees screaming.  That was the end of my climbing and backpacking days.  I did climb Quandary Peak some years later, but I was climbing with people twenty years older than me and it is an easy climb for a fourteener.  

As a substitute I bought a motorcycle.  I had ridden in my younger years, but got away from motorcycles.  I have always sought out activities I have no business engaging in. I was repeating a risky activity beyond my ability.    

Posterior Cruciate Ligament

My first ride into the mountains was up Golden Gate Canyon, one of the many canyons carved down the face of the Colorado Front Range.  The canyons are all winding, scenic, and steep, making for great motorcycle rides.  There are hazards.  Wildlife, crazy drivers, bad weather, and debris on the road.  I went down sliding on some sand . My right knee hit the road, my tibia and fibula stopped, but my femur continued long enough to tear my posterior cruciate.  Ow, Ow, Ow.  After things healed a bit I kept riding and crashing without too much damage.  

One day at work I was walking along and SNAP, my ACL finally gave up.  The MCL was also gone so the only things holding my leg together was skin and muscle.  I now have a titanium knee. It works fine.  My left knee is not so good.  Most of the cartilage is gone and arthritis has set in.    

I get injections in my knee from time to time, and they help.  Some.  Mostly I live with some pain, cycling from mild to hobbling.  I will get another knee replacement some day.  I fall down.  I always have have to some degree, lacking much coordination.  Now it is worse as my balance is increasingly rocky.  I fall off ladders, down stairs, and even on level ground.    

On one of my trips down the stairs I bruised my left hip.  I figured it would heal, not being broken but no luck.  It’s sore, a lot, but aspirin and BenGay are helping.  The orthopedist I have gotten to know pretty well says there is arthritis and not much cartilage there.  She looked at me and suggested a hip and knee replacement.  Well, maybe someday.  

I look at these health issues as teachers.  Stuff doesn’t work well, it gets plugged up, it doesn’t want to flow, and it hurts. It is all likely to get worse.  My job is to adapt.  Life involves change.  It involves pain.  It is endlessly rewarding.  The pain may be limiting, but it does not necessarily lead to suffering.  After all, I can still look at car crashes in Russia on You Tube and make up lies for you to read.

Posted in Aging, Change, Current Activities, Falls, Health Issues, Knee and Hip Injuries, Motorcycle Crashes, My Story, Pain, Stories

Treating Pain

Posted on by Leave a comment

My life has changed because of two stories I heard on NPR.  Remember the classic study of the rat in a cage with two water bottles, one with an opioid, the other plain water.  The rat always chose the drugged water?  Well, another researcher duplicated the study but instead of a bare cage, it was rat friendly.  Places to explore, to dig, to run around, and interact with other rats.  The rats ignored the drug laced water, going for plain water.

The other story is about the Vietnam heroin problem.   About 20% of the GIs there used heroine.  It turned into a major problem.  When those heroin users came home, 95%of them quit heroin without treatment.  The reason for the heroin use in both cases was the desire of the subjects to feel good in a bad situation.  Would you want to be a lone rat in a barren cage?  A soldier in the Vietnam war?

Heroin

Those stories reminded me of what a guy said in a twelve step meeting.  “I want to get my feel good.”   People turn to addicting substances or behaviors in order to feel better.  Lots of people out here don’t feel good for a multitude of reasons.  They turn to food, compulsive exercise, drugs,, internet gaming, gambling, sex, or booze.  It’s the pleasure-pain principle.

When I was fifteen I started drinking.  My buddies and I stole hubcaps for the thrill.  I climbed rocks and canyon walls for excitement.  I always wanted to go just a bit faster or jump higher on my motorcycle.  I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day to stave off the craving.  Anything to feel good or not feel bad.

My early years were troubled.  I had undiagnosed ADD which tended to lead me into trouble.  I was a somewhat lonely only child.  In adolescence I was not a good athlete, had bad acne, and was afraid of girls.  I also had a history of abuse.  I turned to alcohol and risky behavior.  Later, I bought marijuana by the quarter pound.

A tremendous amount of my awareness is consumed by craving, staving craving off, indulging the craving, or obsessing about craving.  I think it’s called addiction.  Addiction has ruled my life to some degree since puberty.  I know I am not alone.  I have been in therapy for years, take my ADD medication, doing 12 step work again, and do lots of prayer and insight meditation.  Slowly it is working.

I will always be an addict.  What is saving me is spirituality.  After a lifetime of searching I have found what works for me.  It is Buddhism with Jesus at the center.  In Buddhism, emptiness-letting go of the thinking self-is the way to the emptiness and true consciousness of being.  For me it is asking Jesus to take the craving and suffering.  2000 years ago he offered to take all our suffering and leave us whole.  I take him up on the offer many times every day.  It works.

Jesus was a man.  He died, but for some reason his spirit lives in me.  I can turn to his spirit to take my pain and leave me whole.  This has always worked for me since I learned about it, but I have often walked away.  Addiction is cunning, baffling, powerful.  It takes lots of work to stay on the path.  (All these biblical references keep coming up).  I had a profound spiritual experience based on turning my life over to Jesus.  I have often walked away from him, but he is there when I come back.

The Buddhist way is taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (Buddha’s teachings), and the Sangha (the spiritual community.  For me it is taking refuge in Jesus, the gospel and the dharma, and the faith community.  It gains strength every Day.  I have to avoid getting tangled up in doctrine.  It’s about letting go and giving it to Jesus.

“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God.  Have mercy on me, a sinner”.  My prayer.

Posted in Addiction, Buddha, Buddhism, Heroin, Insight Meditation, Jesus, Jesus Prayer, Meditation, My Story, Obsession, Pain, Stories, Suffering

Pain

Posted on by Leave a comment

Pain

Pain, suffering, anxiety, fear, discontent, hate, sadness, on and on.  We have lots of names for conditions making life difficult for people.  Let’s lump them together under suffering.  All the world’s faith traditions offer either solace or hope.  Some offer healing.  The healing even works sometimes.

With the possible exception of pain, all the conditions creating suffering have the same origin-us.  All we really need are food, clothing, and shelter.  Everything else is desire, things created in our minds.  “Make it go away.”  There are more strategies for making it go away than there are people on the planet.

The strategies do offer some solace.  Another beer, a horror movie, ice cream, new car, getting laid.  Problem is, the craving always returns.  So, do it again.  And again.  Try something else, maybe jumping out of an airplane will work.  What about Everest?  Running a corporation, getting elected. Trying a long kiss in the stairwell and an affair.  We spend our lives trying to satisfy desire.  All the wise ones offer a supposed cure, usually requiring some degree of sacrifice in pursuit of deliverance.

Often, the sacrifices have to be repeated because the ones asking for a sacrifice are attempting satisfy their own cravings.  It don’t work, folks.  All the attempts at gratification just feed the craving.  Thus, we have a world of suffering.  It’s the wrong approach.

Now, I am going to tell you what to do.  Problem is, I am also trapped on the wheel of desire.  I know the technique works because I have experienced it in my life, once for as long as a year.  It’s simple, let go of desire.  No desire, no suffering.  Bad things still happen, but they don’t result in suffering if the desire is gone.

We all have in our core a condition of pure being, absent of all the world’s clutter.  The task is getting back there.  As we are in a body, to stay alive we must satisfy the body’s needs.  It means  going to school, working, forming associations and partnerships.  All this is hard work and we build our own little mental world and fill it with needs.

Let it go, give it up, just breathe without thinking and you will begin to rediscover the place in the center of your being. Now, do what I say, not what I do.  I built my own little ego world and constantly strive to keep it satisfied.  Sometimes while meditating I am able to enter the peaceful state.  Other times, all I do is think, often about what to write about not thinking.

When I am having a hard time letting thinking go I pray.  I pray for myself, for others. For the earth.  Prayer takes me away from my self.  I stop praying and am sometimes able to re-enter the empty space.  Often all I can do is pray.  And pray.

I think choosing a prayer is a personal, private thing.  It can be a mantra, a quote from the dharma, a prayer of thanks or for mercy.  It can come from any faith tradition or none.  It doesn’t seem to matter where the prayer is directed.  It doesn’t have to be directed anywhere.  What is important is the act of praying, of getting outside of the cluttered world where we spend most of out time.

The next time I meditate it can be easier to enter that space of peace.  Or not.  I used to say writing is the hardest thing to do.  Now I think it is meditation.  How to be without striving, without suffering, without escaping.

I think I will go to the store and then meditate.

Posted in ADD, Addiction, Alcohol, cigarettes, Obsession, Pain, Stories

Dukkha

Posted on by Leave a comment

Dukkha is the Pali word originally translated as suffering.  Pali is the ancient Indian language, along with Sanskrit, used to write down the discourses of the Buddha.  Usage of Pali tended to move south to Sri Lanka and South Asia, while Sanskrit was incorporated in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism.

The Buddhist group I attend is  part of the Theravada tradition, most of those bringing it to the west studied in Sri Lanka or Thailand.  There are differences, but to me the differences can be compared to Lutherans and Baptists.  The essential message is the same.

Dukkha is central to Buddhism.  It can’t be precisely translated.  Discontent, craving, anxiety, dissatisfaction, suffering, and hopelessness are typical translations.  I’m sure you get the idea, we all experience dukkha.  The goal of Buddhism is the end of dukkha.  Without dukkha, a person is totally in the moment, seeing life as it is, not how our egos want it to be.   All our lives, we are attempting to shape our world into what we have decided it should be.  Ain’t gonna happen, folks.

Therefore we live lives of striving or despair because things aren’t what we think they should be.  Well, things are what they are.  That’s all.  I want comfort, security, love, time for adventure, and no Japanese Beetles.  I have love, but the other things seem to be lacking somewhere.  Perhaps the best illustration is the difference between pain and suffering.  My knee hurts, my fingers are getting stiff, and I itch.  I’m human, that stuff is inevitable.  I don’t want it to be true.  I get upset when I itch, and the damn Japanese Beetles won’t go away.  I feel discontent.

Insight Meditation is the practice of sitting and following the breath.  Just the breath.  Not thinking about ice cream, the breath.  When thoughts about ice cream or anything else arise, simply return to the breath.  Later, when thoughts arise, observe them without engaging them and watch them pass away.  That itch in the left ear canal, observe it and note it goes away.  Or not.

The key is not getting involved with the itch.  It is an itch over which I have no control.  I want to stick a Q-tip in there, but it won’t help.  The itch does what it will.  Let it be.  Chill, dude.  Am I good at this?  Not so much.  That’s why it is called a practice.  I have noticed some progress, but it is slow.  I don’t get as irritated in traffic.  I am a bit better at putting up with Carol’s Hallmark Channel movies (not really), and I am a complete failure at accepting the beetles.

I have a touch of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  There is an ongoing, futile attempt to control one’s environment, so strong it becomes ritualized.  For me, the coffee maker has to be in it’s exact place WITHOUT ANYTHING IN FRONT OF IT.  When a cup is sitting there, my neck and shoulder muscles tense, and I utter a quiet oath.  So what’s the big deal anyway?  Nada.  That’s dukkha.  My day will go just fine if the cup stays there.  Surprisingly, it will probably get moved, and there was no need to get all uptight.

Breathe in, breathe out, watch the reaction, watch it pass away.  The world is as it is.

Posted in Buddha, Buddhism, Insight Meditation, My Story, Pain, Stories, Suffering

Insects

Posted on by Leave a comment

Japanese Beetle

Insects are part of life.  I mostly ignore them unless they are deer flies or horseflies.  I get swollen welts the size of a cupcake when they sneak up and get me.  Denver is pretty dry, so mosquitos aren’t much of a problem.  Bees and wasps won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.  Flies in the house are a nuisance but they are easy to control.   

Insects in the garden can be a problem, but they can be controlled as well.  There is one huge exception, however.  Japanese beetles are evil, vile, nasty creatures masterminded by Darth Vader, the Empire, and the Borg.  They eat, kill, and destroy.   

Four years ago Denver had no Japanese beetles.  Then, someone in one of the upscale neighborhoods brought in some plantings with beetle larvae in the soil.  They are rapidly spreading northward.  Two years we had a few, last year they were a plague.   

Damage

What do they do?  The beetles themselves eat leaves.  They love rose blossoms, but leave those leaves alone.  They like linden tree leaves, grape leaves, raspberry leaves, and peach tree leaves.  A rosebud opens in the morning and by noon the flower is gone.  They work on grape leaves to the extent that any new growth stops.  That is no good when you are trying to grow a grape arbor.  Lots of linden leaves get honeycombed, but the tree seems to be able to cope.  Our peach tree and the raspberries get attacked, but so far, not a lot of damage.   

In Palisade, over on the Western Slope, peaches and vineyards are the mainstay of the economy.  Unchecked, the beetles would have wiped them out, so they took the nuclear option.  They sprayed.  Spraying stopped the beetles, but it killed the beneficial insects as well.   

Japanese Beetle Grubs in a Lawn

The other part of the Japanese beetle life cycle is when the beetles fly down and lay their eggs in the lawn.  The eggs hatch, and the grubs start eating the grass roots.   Lots of eggs, lots of grubs.  They can be so dense as to form a living mat of grubs.  The lawn develops spreading dead spots.  Uncontrolled, no lawn. 

What to do?  In the morning go out and flick the beetles into soapy water.  Nematodes and milky  spore help with the grubs.  There is a grub poison called GrubEx, but it isn’t selective in what it poisons.   

Trap

A popular control is traps.  The kind where the beetles fly into the jug, attracted by some bait.  They drown, and give off a scent that attracts more beetles.  Soon, it is a beetle feeding frenzy with beetles coming from the entire neighborhood.  They look around for another snack and eat all your plants.  You can’t have the trap near your vulnerable plants, not easy on a small urban lot.  I think I will do it anyway, just to watch the evil creatures die. 

I don’t think we will have a grape arbor.  The linden, peach tree, and the raspberries will cope.  We will cut off all the rose buds in June and July.  We may have to eliminate what lawn we have left after years of reducing its size.  

My task is to give up on my beetle obsession.

 Japanese Beetle

Posted in Beetles, My Story, Obsession, Pain, Pestilence, Stories

Getting Older

Posted on by Leave a comment

Really Old

I am 74.  I retired in 2011 at age 68 when I started noticing I wasn’t as sharp in responding to problems.  I also noticed my co-workers giving me the easier jobs when on a project,I was used to wading right in, sometimes literally.  It was a water plant, after all.

Now, other things have manifested. If it doesn’t hurt, it itches. I have arthritis and allergies.  My balance problems keep me off the third step of the ladder.  I was falling off.  I fell on the stairs, broke two ribs.  I gave up motorcycling, given my desire to stay alive (Just go to motorcycle crashes on YouTube.).

People are dying.  Yes, they have  doing it all my life, but now it’s old friends, classmates, a guy I was Best Man for.  Not people I viewed as Old People, but my contemporaries.  Does that mean I am an Old Person?  Yep.  Old people see their friends dying.  You can also tell if you are old by falling down in a public place.  People laugh if you are young.  You are old if they rush over to help.

Then there is CRS.  I have always had a poor memory, but this is getting ridiculous.  When I hear someone’s name on meeting them I tell them I will forget it.  I head downstairs to get something, do two or three things I see need doing, and go up without I went after.  Also, people my age tend to be terrified when they start forgetting.  Is it Alzheimer’s?  Am I going to be a drooling vegetable?  I try to stick to my rule about not worrying about things I have no control over, but it doesn’t always work.

A good thing: after my ADD diagnosis at age 59 with the therapy and medication I have more focus.  I can even manage to focus on stuff I don’t like to do.  I used to put off paying bills until my anxiety level forces me to sit down.  Now, I can plan the time and actually follow the plan some of the time.  I can write.  I don’t have to go to work.  I just spend my four pensions and watch our investments slowly diminish.

Writing is a good thing for an old dude to do.  I can do it most any time, usually mornings.  I go to a coffee shop where I am something of a regular and do some extroverting along with the writing.  I always wanted to write, but could not maintain the focus to write for myself.  With a deadline, the anxiety level activated my prefrontal cortex enough to allow me to get the words down.  In college I wrote papers for Forestry majors and the like for $10.00 per page (long time ago).

Now I write for myself.  I almost always write nonfiction, like most of my reading.  As you can see from this website, I have a wide range of interests.  That’s  probably a function of an ADD shifting his attention all the time.  I need to know.  They say ADD’s occupy an evolutionary niche because their shifting attention enabled them to spot those brutes from the neighboring tribe or the saber-toothed tiger.  Sentinels.  Of course, we are also smart and charming.  Someone has to keep the place stirred up.

I have written a little fiction, some very short stories and a longer short story when taking a class at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop here in Denver.   Good people there, students and faculty.  Naturally, some English majors, more interesting than engineers, although impoverished.

For me fiction is hard work. You have to create the world of the story and invent the characters.  Good fiction also uses lots of metaphor.  I am not very good in that area, mostly because it takes lots of practice.  I usually write about shifting tectonic plates; not so much need for metaphor there.

I have taken to reading novels aloud to Carol just before bedtime.  She likes mysteries written by women, she calls them novels of manners.  Much of their focus is on character development and scene setting, so they are a good light reading genre.  The reading is fostering an interest in fiction again.  Can I produce a story about geologists?  Maybe a story about 19th Century naturalists and biblical literalists.  Have I mentioned I like history?

I will have to work on producing pieces longer than 550 words, however. I can do the short essays in one coffee shop session.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Aging, Balance Problems, Falls, Health Issues, Humor, Itch, Pain, Stories

The Hurt, The Itch, and The Joke

Posted on by 2 comments

It’s raining today, which means it is time for miscellany.  I always have a few short ideas rattling around in my head, and these days writing about them is the best way to get them out of there.  First, the itch. 

For years now, if it doesn’t hurt, it itches.  I have arthritis in several places and it bothers me from time to time.  Currently it is my left knee and my left wrist.  The knee hurts and is weak for the first few steps when I get out of the chair.  I get shots in the knee from time to time, usually good for six months or so.  I am left handed and the wrist is intermittently a real pain, usually when gardening.  I notice that my left hand is weaker than the other one (I won’t say right.)  as I am the official opener and fixer around the house, this is not good.   

Itch

Itch

The itch is the biggie.  I itch every morning until the Allegra kicks in, and every evening until the Benadryl kicks in.  I don’t know what the allergen is, and it is year around.  The worst spots are on my back over my kidneys.  Right now, the inside of my forearm and calf are itching.  The itch doesn’t drive me nuts, I was already there.   

I tried the allergy specialist with no luck.  The only things that help are the antihistamines.  There is a possibility the allergen is one of the medications I take.  Next time I see my doctor I will talk to her about doing an allergy elimination protocol.  I won’t do it myself, I take that stuff for a reason.  I don’t want to have a stroke while tracking the source of the itch. 

I didn’t itch when I was younger.  I even felt a bit smug when others complained about their allergies.  Maybe the whole thing is karma.   

cuironNrgb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, the joke, my favorite of all time.  I see a person wearing a college t-shirt or sweatshirt and ask them if they know why graduates of the school’s big rival keep a copy of their diploma on the dash of their car.  They do it so they can park in the handicapped spot.  Here in Denver it is usually Colorado-Nebraska or Denver University-Colorado College.  Nebraska, of course, is the most appropriate.  That N on their football player’s helmets stands for nowledge.  Most Coloradoans know that joke, but it is fun to see the reaction when in Nebraska. 

I have used it for schools all over the country.  Michigan-Ohio State, Purdue-Indiana, Notre Dame-Penn State, Duke-North Carolina, Auburn-Alabama, USC-UCLA, and especially Texas-Texas A&M, as Aggies are right in there with Nebraska.  I have told this to dozens of people, and only one didn’t like the joke.

Posted in Arthritis, Health Issues, Itch, My Story, Pain, Stories, Writing

Knees and Such

Posted on by Leave a comment
Arthritis

Arthritis

Old age happens if things go as planned.  Inside, I feel like the Bill I always have, but the case is starting to wear out.  I get together with my buddy Dan, and we always devote some time to catching up with our health care issues.  I went to the Orthopod this week, got a cortisone shot in my left knee (the other knee is Titanium).  Didn’t do much good.   

Every time Dan plays pickleball (I know, just look it up.), he limps.  He has a bad ticker, I have a bad brain.  I spend time at the VA audiology clinic dealing with hearing aids.  I saw the ENT specialist there about my balance problem that may be from damage to the vestibular nerve that was damaged from the loud noises responsible for my hearing loss.   

Vestibulocochlear Nerve Anatomy

Vestibulocochlear Nerve Anatomy

I itch.  For most of my life I was allergy free.  No more.  There is always something setting my eczema off along with the stuffy nose.  I have almost no sense of smell left.  Springtime is wonderful except for the pollen.  Fall is wonderful except for the pollen.   

I ache.  The knee, my wrist, both shoulders, and my back.  I think all this is a sign of old age.  Most of the time all these symptoms don’t interfere with my life.  I just soldier along not letting all the stuff get to me.  After all, it is just pain and will change tomorrow.  I can usually let it all go.  Yesterday, however, my knee hurt when it was straight.  It also hurt when it was bent.  Today it just barely hurts. 

The trick for me is to not let the pain go to suffering.  After all, we can’t do much about the pain, but suffering about it is a choice.  All this stuff is a reminder about death.  It’s clear by no that I am in the last third of my life, sitting in a coffee shop full of people in the first third of their lives. 

The good thing about getting older is that I know a lot of stuff.  I like thinking and writing about all that stuff.  For example, I am about to make you yawn as you read about the Golden Fault.  There is something for you to look forward to.  In the meantime, health issues. 

Carol has a chronic illness that limits her life, but the last year has been a bad one.  Late last spring she had cataract surgery that went bad.  The little sac the lens lives in tore, so the new lens had to go between her iris and cornea.  She got a little hole poked in her iris to let fluid move around.  The hole is too big, letting in too much light where it doesn’t belong, leading to lots of vision problems.   

Cataract Surgery

Cataract Surgery

She also had five stitches in her cornea, which meant pain for weeks.  Now, with a new Ophthalmologist, she is wearing a tinted contact lens to confirm the hole in her iris is too large.  The lens works, but she is not a contact lens candidate.  More discomfort.  The next step is a minor surgical! procedure to make the hole smaller. 

In the middle of all this, with all the multiple visits to eye doctors, she had hemorrhoid surgery.  It was her last resort and believe me, it should be a last resort.  Pain, lots of it, and a major restriction on activity.  What a year. 

But, through it all, life is good.  We have fun, cooking, snuggling, reading aloud, gardening, fixing the garage where I drove into it (I am always  on her case about her driving.).  And, we are watching NCIS from the first season on.  There is something about murder mysteries that pulls us, and the character development is as good as it was in Seinfeld.  We still call Mark Harmon Dickie, from a role he had as a detective years ago.  The name seems to fit him. 

Aging, health issues, losing old friends, all this comes when you are in your seventies, but life goes,on, and we are wise and skilled at enjoying life.  In addition, we just found out that Carol’s sister, diagnosed with stage four cancer, is now cancer free after an ordeal with treatment.  She had multiple tumors, and they are gone.

Posted in Current Activities, Health Issues, My Story, Pain, Stories

My Meditation Practice

Posted on by Leave a comment
The Buddha

The Buddha

As I mentioned in the last post, for years I was unable to meditate.  I have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and as soon as my eyes closed my brain would go into high gear.  The idea of meditation is to let those thoughts go so you can be aware in the moment.  For ADD’s, the moment is often chaos, with thoughts leaping from subject to another, or hyper focus, with the thoughts totally engaged on one topic or task. 

After a diagnosis and treatment, I can meditate.  Now meditation is not spending all one’s time in the moment.  At first and often those thoughts arise and with my addictions, they can be compelling.  So, sit, watch my breath, the thoughts arise, I let them go, and they arise again.  It can be excruciating, dealing with all that meaningless thought.  I find a prayer helps me instead of just focusing on the breath.   

Paradoxically, my prayer is Christian.  At its core, Buddhism is essentially atheistic and in my view a psychology, not a religion,  being 2500 years old from a culture soaked in religion, it adopted all the trappings.  I grew up nominally Christian and became a toung-talking holy roller Christian in my forties.  I don’t do that so much any more, but Jesus is in my life to stay. 

I use the Jesus Prayer, an ancient Eastern Orthodox prayer dating back to the desert fathers.  “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  The most famous book about the prayer, “The Way of a Pilgrim“, suggests starting with 3000 repetitions per day.  I recite the prayer a lot, but never 3000 times.  I sit, start praying, and time the words with my breath.   When those thoughts rise, as they always will, I return to the prayer.  Those times of being in the moment come, and I drop into watching my breath.  Thoughts arise and I gently return to the prayer. 

I find the moments of stillness are slowly growing.  I also find the poisonous thoughts are diminishing.  When poisonous thoughts about pretty girls arise, I pray for them.  “May she be happy, may she be free, may she be safe”.  Then back to the Jesus Prayer until more thoughts arise. 

The thoughts aren’t just about pretty girls, I find myself planning, plotting, reviewing past mistakes, feeling guilt or shame; being angry, sad, sick, hurting, happy, horny, old, tired, loving, lonely, excited, the entire range of feeling and thought.  All that stuff comes from my past or is about the future.  Thus, they are all meaningless.  The past is gone, and the future is unknown.   

All there really is is the moment.  My brain tends to disagree.  I experience all those thoughts and feelings as real because they are wired neural connections.  The task of meditation is to rewrite those connections so I can spend more time in the moment. 

Now, lots of those connections are important.  I need food, shelter, my long baths, some rags on my back, all the stuff of daily living.  I don’t need Donald Trump or the Kardashians.  I mention those because I was in the  doctor’s office yesterday reading those stupid magazines.  Why didn’t I have my book or just pray? 

I find myself wanting to meditate more.  The toxic thinking is diminishing, although lots of people continue to be prayed for.  I have purged the computers, my library, don’t watch the wrong television or movies, and am able to spend more time in the moment (still not much time, alas). 

Next is some retreats.  Retreats last from one day up.  I have done them in a Christian context and found them useful.  I am looking at attending a four day retreat in the mountains.  There are lots of retreats available, mostly led by Dharma teachers who are therapists or in other helping professions.  Retreats allow intensive meditation with little interruption from the outside world.  I need that.

 

Posted in Buddhism, Family History, Health Issues, Insight Meditation, Jesus Prayer, Meditation, Mental Health, My Story, Pain, Stories

Insight Meditation

Posted on by Leave a comment
Meditation

Meditation

I recently wrote about my struggle with addictions.  Yes, multiple addictions.  It is just now coming out that the root cause of addiction is abuse at some time in the addict’s life.  It is true for me.  I turned to addictive behavior to get a feel good in a life that incorporated pain or suffering stemming from the abuse.  

The mental pain or suffering arises, and I seek to eliminate or blunt the pain with the feel good.  It can be alcohol, food, exercise, sex, tobacco, work, drugs, shopping, gambling, music, or other obsessive behaviors.  I tried most of them, and they worked-briefly.  The pain returns.  Another round starts, but it takes a bit more to drive the pain away as the guilt and shame grow.  The wheel turns. 

The result? I have had a lifetime of suffering with futile attempts to escape.  The addictions have not been all-consuming.  I have a good marriage, a comfortable retirement, many interests to keep me occupied and engaged, and a family I am close with.  I have had years of therapy that helped in some areas, but the addictions remained.  The addictions have consumed a tremendous amount of time and energy.  All this stems from events in my childhood continuing to haunt me. 

Well, that was then, and it is now.  So, why addictive behavior when the abuse happened so long ago?  We store the feelings from abuse in our minds.  Those feelings and sensations stay with us and arise later as suffering.  They exist as neural connections in our brains.  Those connections and stored memories and feelings are not permanent or hard wired.  The brain is plastic and those old demons can be dealt with, the connections altered or eliminated.  

There are a number of techniques, including 12 step programs, cognitive therapy, psychoanalysis, immersion in a religious organization, and other therapies.  Some work, some don’t or are just mental band-aids.

Recent neuroscience research indicates that insight meditation is an effective means of altering or eliminating those old neural pathways.  In many cases, ten or fifteen minutes per day seem to be effective.  In deeply entrenched addictions, fifteen minutes is not enough.  I try to do a forty minute meditation along with the morning fifteen minute session every day.  I also attend two formal insight meditation meetings per week. 

Insight meditation is fairly simple.  Find a comfortable position where you are not likely to fall asleep.  Observe your breath.  It may be your nostrils or your abdomen or chest rising and falling. Just focus on the breath.  Thoughts will arise.  Just note and name them.  Hungry, hungry.  You will find the thought changes or fades, leaving you a moment without thoughts arising.  When they do, note them name them, and observe them changing.     

You will find yourself drifting away, planning, worrying, most anything.  When you notice this, gently return to the breath.  I find it useful to say a short prayer several times until I am able to return to the breath.  At times, it seems like all I am doing is praying, with no stillness.  Other times I can return to the breath right away. 

The process is frustrating at first, because it seems like there is almost no time just watching the breath.  No big. Deal, just keep it up.  You will find those thoughts arising with less frequency and intensity.  You are reprogramming your brain. 

Insight meditation is used in schools, some workplaces, in prisons, and in psychotherapy.  It sometime seems it is the next big thing.  Well, no.  It is a Buddhist practice in use for twenty five hundred years.  It is not really a religious practice.  It is a practice used to get rid of all the mental clutter so one can lead a life free of the suffering all that clutter causes. 

Next time I will illustrate the process with my own experience.  Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Alcohol, Buddhism, Insight Meditation, Jesus Prayer, Meditation, Mental Health, My Story, Pain, Stories
« Older Entries