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Summary
My spiritual journey began when I was a teenager, but it acquired urgency when I had a mental breakdown in college. For years I sought to understand the spiritual meaning in my madness, but it was not until I encountered Buddhism that I learned the discipline of a practice that would bring stability to my life and a successful career in peer advocacy.
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Spirituality was both the cause of my madness and its cure. From an early age I sought out spiritual experiences, sometimes known as altered states. These became both the basis of my faith and the trigger of mental illness.
Years before my first mental breakdown, I defined my life and beliefs by a night in Colorado during the summer of my sixteenth year. I was on an overnight trip with girls from my summer camp, and we spent the night beside a high mountain lake called Loch Vale. Unable to sleep, I dragged my sleeping bag onto a big rock at the side of the lake, where I sat alone and instinctively adopted a meditative position with crossed legs and erect posture. I sat all night in the silence of wilderness with only the light of stars reflecting in the lake and silhouetting the three black mountains on the other side. At first my thoughts jumped about, with worries about problems at home. Then, becoming more aware of the landscape around me, I thought self-consciously about what I labeled the "beauty of nature" and the "glory of God." At some point in the middle of the night my thoughts stopped altogether, and my mind filled with a refreshing emptiness. This altered state was not a dramatic realization but a matter-of-fact clarity and peace. I was still aware of my surroundings, but the lake, the mountains, the air were no longer separate from me. I felt transparent. Eventually the black clarity gave way to a gray light creeping over the mountains, and conventional reality returned with the dawn.
At the time, I did not consider my experience to be a big deal. I had always enjoyed what I called "communing with nature" - spending time sitting outdoors by streams or lakes. The experience at Loch Vale seemed nothing unusual. I did, however, puzzle that I had sat for so long with no thoughts at all, and I even wondered if there was, perhaps, something wrong with me! It had never occurred to me that consciousness without thoughts was possible, much less desirable. Gradually, as I returned to everyday life and high school, I began to appreciate the significance of my experience, and even wrote about it, because it seemed to mark a turning point in my life - from child to adult, from doubter to believer. On Sundays I began arriving early at church so that I could stay a long time on my knees, not mouthing prayers but evoking the inner silence that I had found in the mountains. What I had discovered, I later learned, was what Buddhists call "emptiness," the foundation of spiritual realization.
Spiritual Breakthrough
College was stressful. Since the age of seven I had called myself a writer, but now I was faced with the prospect of having to earn a living. I felt alienated from society and even from friends and family, and any writing I attempted seemed self-conscious rather than creative. I felt somehow different from everybody else, and inadequate. Nevertheless I plodded along conscientiously until the middle of my junior year, when life blew up on me.
It started with another spiritual experience, this one dramatic and overwhelming. I sat in my dorm room listening to a recording of T.S. Eliot reading his own Four Quartets. His funereal words, "Time present and time past, are both perhaps present in time future," took on meanings beyond poetry and became to me instructions in Universal Truth. I felt the boundaries of time dissolve, leaving me at the still point that was the convergence of the ultimate and the particular.
My altered state three years before in Colorado had been clear and quiet. This one was filled with color and energy. Thoughts, associations, and every visual object leapt and danced together, all leading to luminosity and joy, and an exquisite appreciation of all things. Now, forty years later, it is still impossible to describe this state adequately. I believed then, and still do believe, that I had encountered true reality, the solution to a great secret which, in essence, was that all things are interconnected and all things are beautiful. In this condition, my body was not transparent, as it had been by the lake, but transformed. I found that I could lift heavy objects with no strain, and my senses were sharpened - for example, I could see clearly without the use of my glasses. This was the beginning of my first manic episode, an experience, I suppose, of what the doctors call "elation." But this state should not be pathologized. I was to spend the next three decades trying to recapture that luminosity. It was only when I finally encountered Buddhism that I learned to understand what it all meant and what to do about it.
The brilliance of the luminous state lasted only a day or two. Then, like someone who had overindulged in wine or drugs, I fell into a nightmare of delusion and anguish, and the luminosity disintegrated. I went for days without eating or sleeping, and my mind careened out of control. I drove my friends wild with worry, and when one of them tried to talk me sensibly, I struck her. Finally I was carried off to a mental hospital in an ambulance. Once incarcerated, I was heavily drugged and not once asked to describe the experience that got me there.
Mental and Spiritual Illness
This was my introduction to a mental health system that enforces its norms with an iron fist, chooses which outcomes to call "recovery," and conveniently overlooks the mind itself, with all of its spiritual qualities. I stumbled through the next 16 years trying to reach the "normality" that was required of me, all the while wondering what had really happened in my mind, and secretly yearning to re-experience the joy and color of that state. Without understanding and incorporating my spiritual experience, my life was unfinished, like the stories I tried to write and could not. Everything I did was doomed to failure.
I married and started to raise two children. But it was not long before I lapsed into one manic episode after another. Although I tried to ride through these episodes with the pleasures and insights of the first one, I was constantly aware that, sooner or later, I would be carried off to the hospital and locked up and drugged. The episodes became recurring nightmares that finally led to admission to a long-term hospital in another state. There I suffered through nearly two years of depression and despair until my husband sued me for divorce, and the hospital released me to live alone, without a home and without my children.
Although I lost custody of my children, I did manage to find satisfying work, first at a printing company, then as a freelance proofreader. I also wrote for the local NOW newsletter. It was a whole new life for me, and although I experienced more manic episodes, I was able to get though a couple of them alone, with others resulting in hospitalizations of only a few days. Through my feminist activities I met a woman who later became my lover. We bought a house in western Maine, and I took a job as editor and writer for a local newspaper. The mania returned with a vengeance, however, and I lost my job and freaked out my partner with my wild behavior. She left me alone in the house, and never returned.
Dharma Discovered
I had grown up a regular churchgoer, first in the Disciples of Christ church and then as an Episcopalian. I sang in the choirs from an early age and was generally serious and faithful in my Christian beliefs. But after the bouts with madness, I could no longer reconcile my knowledge of luminosity with the Church's teachings. I had long talks with my Episcopal priest, but still could not resolve the issues, or even adequately explain to him what had happened to me. While in Maine, I received instructions from a Christian Science practitioner. I liked a lot of the teachings, although was not persuaded to become a practitioner myself.
But while I worked at the newspaper, I learned that there was a Buddhist meditation center in Vermont, not too far from us, where a Tibetan Lama who had studied at Oxford in England was teaching to American students. One weekend I drove to Karme Choling, and encountered Chogyam Trungpa, the lama himself, who was just returning from a yearlong retreat. Although I did not talk with him personally, I was stunned at the instantaneous connection that I felt. I bought every book that he had written, and was amazed to find that the Buddhist teachings immediately "fit" with my own beliefs and experiences. Although the Christian teachers that I had consulted about my madness never seemed to understand what I was talking about, the Buddhist writers described in detail mental states very much like the ones I knew, and even gave a name to my experience of luminosity. They called it mahamudra, or "great symbol."
At Karme Choling, the principle activity was what was called, simply, "sitting." One end of the building was devoted to an enormous shrine room with a polished hardwood floor and decorations in red and gold. Even the meditation cushions were red and gold. I was assigned a meditation instructor, who tried to convince me that the meditation was just "sitting," and nothing to get excited about. I did not believe her. I already knew what meditation was all about - it was what I had done beside the lake and on the prayer bench in church. I was delighted to find that all of the pieces of my spiritual experience were at last falling into place.
It became frustrating, however, to try to explain myself to the young teachers at Karme Choling. They were only students themselves, and when I tried to ask about my mental states, they did not seem to know what I was talking about. They seemed to answer by rote, with answers that were "spiritually correct." When describing meditation, the students went out of their way to say that it was "no big deal." Of course, that was the way that I myself had experienced it. But when the young students described it, they were smug and even flippant, and I felt that they were only mouthing words that they were taught.
Although meditation was "no big deal," it was practiced three times a day, and more often than that during intensive practice sessions. Most of the practitioners seemed to become "zonked" out after an hour-long session of sitting, but I found it energizing. I had to restrain myself from enthusiastically chatting with others at dinnertime, as the accepted decorum was to maintain a zombie-like mask. It was excruciating to finally encounter the "truth" but have no one to discuss it with. I did not realize that the more hours I spent in silent meditation, the more my emotions were commandeered by an energy that was not just clarity, but was also the kind of elation that had gotten me in trouble in college. This led to disaster.
I began writing long, intense letters to Rinpoche, and tried to appear wherever he went, in the hope of obtaining an interview. At one point, in a frenzy of spiritual excitement (and mania), I decided to "crash" his annual seminary in New Hampshire. I laid in wait for him in the lobby of the hotel, and slipped past his guards to present him with a gift. He had the grace to thank me for it and to ask one of his assistants to give me a room for the night, as it was beginning to snow heavily. I spent the night in a small bedroom on the third floor, looking out at the falling snow that covered the hotel and its environs in deep, white silence. It was almost like a meditation.
I decided that I needed authentic instruction from Tibetan lamas, not from yuppie-like students. Trungpa Rinpoche had spoken of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, a new monastery that would become the spiritual home of the Kagyu lineage in America. KTD was located on a mountain road in Woodstock, New York, and after my adventure at the seminary, I drove there. I met three authentic lamas, one of whom was Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, the abbot. Because the lamas had only recently moved to KTD themselves, there was only a handful of other students. I was one of only 3 or 4 persons who took refuge from Khenpo Rinpoche one Sunday afternoon. This ceremony was like a combination of baptism and confirmation. I promised to adhere to and take refuge in "the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha (community)," without at the same time having to renounce any other religion. Rinpoche gave each of us a Dharma name and a small gift. My name was Karma Tsultrim Zangmo, which I later learned meant "Member of the Kagyu lineage/Discipline/Good Woman." I was told that the middle name represented the area in which I had to apply the most effort. I guess I needed discipline!
I was able to arrange for several face-to-face interviews with Khenpo Rinpoche. I spoke to him openly about my mental illness, and my belief that the luminosity I experienced was genuine and meaningful. He accepted this belief of mine (to my astonishment!), but declined to assign a spiritual practice for me, as he did for most of the other students. Instead, he told me that I should take what I had learned from my experience and share it with others in my community. I confess that this disappointed me somewhat, as I had fantasies of diligently praying for several years at the monastery, after which I would reach full enlightenment and become ordained as a nun.
I was still intoxicated with mystical thoughts, and again my energies got the better of me. One night, when all of the lamas were invited to dinner with a Woodstock resident, I became frustrated with the attitude of the other students, who used the lamas' absence to lounge around the living room and speak crudely. On a manic impulse I found the fire alarm in the dining room, and broke the glass. The result was awesome. Bells and sirens went off, and a white chemical spilled from the kitchen ceiling and covered everything with a thick white powder. The end result was that the lamas personally escorted me to the sheriff's office, where I was arrested for criminal trespass and sent to jail for a week. Following that I was committed to the state psychiatric hospital in Poughkeepsie, where I spent a miserable, lonely Christmas.
When I returned home to Portland, Maine, I had no clue how to implement Rinpoche's advice to work with other people. My faith in the Dharma remained unshaken, but there was no way to put it into practice. I continued attending the Episcopal Church. I took a job at a radio station, and began to attend Alcoholics Anonymous. Reasoning that I drank whenever I got manic, I called myself an alcoholic for two years and enjoyed the system of peer support created by AA. The Twelve Step and Big Book meetings that I attended were helpful, even though I always knew that my problem was not so much that I was powerless over alcohol as it was that I was a prisoner of my mind. As a Buddhist, I never could accept the concept of a "Higher Power," but I slid over that and did my best to work the program. After a year or so, I learned to take responsibility for my behavior, and I tried to make amends with all of the people I had hurt when manic. I wrote letters of apology to the lamas at KTD and to Trungpa Rinpoche.
After two years in AA, I went off the deep end again. I got wildly manic and drank a fifth of bourbon, thereby burning all of my bridges with my AA sponsor and other AA friends. After witnessing my sponsor's failure to understand the difference between a manic episode and a bender, I could no longer go back to AA. Instead, I wound up with the first of many commitments to the state hospital in Augusta. What I had learned in AA opened my eyes to the value of peer support, and I took solace in talking with fellow patients, in giving and receiving peer support. With the positive energy of mania, I had learned how to cheer people up and give them hope. In this way I directed the energy that had been so destructive to a constructive purpose.
The Practice of Compassion
When I got home I wrote a letter of apology to my AA sponsor. Making amends was a discipline that I learned in AA and took to heart, along with peer support. It was the first time I took responsibility for the way I had behaved and damaged others when I was manic.
I made up my mind to live alone and find some way to carry out Khenpo Rinpoche's instructions. At the hospital, when my psychologist had asked me what my support system would be, I did not even know what he was talking about. I had become used to living with no family, no friends, and not even a therapist. The woman I lived with for awhile, my former AA cronies, and most of my family, who lived far away, had pretty much given up on me.
When I left the hospital, I heard of a new organization in Portland - the Alliance for the Mentally Ill. I joined, even though the members were mostly families, not mental health consumers. Immediately I sought out my peers - the sons and daughters of AMI members - and joined their small support group, called Consumer Coalition for the Mentally Ill. Before too long I became the leader of the group, and we grew from a handful of members to a non-profit organization that supported mental health consumers. To reflect our newly radical stance, we renamed ourselves the Portland Coalition for the Psychiatrically Labeled. It was a joyful time for me. I prolifically produced a sing-along and poetry groups, a slide show, a poetry book, peer support groups, and even political demonstrations. I introduced advocacy for clients in the mental health system in Maine and wrote successful grants to give us funding for an office and for our advocacy and peer support work. I followed my instincts in advocating locally and around the state, a little astonished, to find that, for the first time in my life, I could play a useful and important role. I thought back in gratitude to Rinpoche's advice to work with other people in the community, certain that this was exactly what he had in mind.
In developing the Coalition, I experienced what was later, by researchers, to be called the "helper principle." The idea is that when a person who is wounded works to help others who are similarly wounded, both benefit. I had received a taste of this in AA, where I found peers helping peers, and working for their mutual recovery. I began to appreciate the Buddhist emphasis on compassion as the active side of enlightenment. I understood that merely following a regimen of prayer would not have been enough for me - it might result in only the abstract wisdom of faith without a ground in reality. I had to learn to truly care about others. So I worked to accomplish for mental health consumers in Maine what at that time in 1981 had been achieved in few other places - a peer-run organization that believed in empowerment and respect. I even managed to sneak in a little Dharma through the Coalition's motto, a standard Buddhist maxim: "To help ourselves and others." I was in my forties, and those were the best days of my life.
But this was still only half good enough. Even with all of the gratification from my work, I still had to deal with fiery psychotic episodes that damaged both myself and others. At least once every year I succumbed to the seduction of mania, and tried in desperation to recapture luminosity and find the "ultimate" meaning of the universe. Each of these episodes ended in a crash of bleak depression, and during one of these I tried to commit suicide. This pattern went on for seven years. In between times, I tried to be both good Dharma practitioner and a faithful Christian. I sang in the choir at St. Peter's. I joined a Buddhist study group that met weekly and dutifully sat with them for hours at a time, even though I knew that this unstructured practice was dangerous for me, and raised manic energy. I had not returned to KTD since the fire alarm incident, afraid that the lamas would reject me.
But the magical successes with the Coalition ceased and soured. The board of directors would no longer tolerate my frequent relapses. Worse, some of these persons, along with the staff, became heady with the power and influence that the director and I had earned through hard work, and they wanted this power for themselves. Several of them worked actively to subvert the administration, and they succeeded.
I was devastated. I felt as if I had returned to "square one" - once again a total failure. I was bewildered that a project started with such good advice from my teacher, and carried out with such joy and success, could just as quickly turn to dust in my hands. I could only conclude that my fault had been in not learning to control my manic episodes, and I chose to follow the Buddhist maxim to "take the blame upon yourself." I had to acknowledge the Dharma teaching, emphasized over and over again, that everything without exception is impermanent. I wrote a letter to Khenpo Rinpoche explaining that I had followed his advice, and describing what had happened. I asked whether it would be possible for me to return to KTD for further study and meditation instruction.
The Discipline of Practice
Much to my surprise, rather than regarding me as a persona non grata, Rinpoche chided me for not keeping in touch with him and said that I would be welcome to come back to KTD. I immediately visited there several times over the next year. I resolved to move permanently to the monastery and perhaps to carry out my original intention of living the rest of my life in retreat and prayer. I carried out my decision in steps, however, wanting to act from wisdom rather than impulse.
In my first interviews with Rinpoche, I requested that he give me a meditation practice that I could do at home but that would not exacerbate my manic energies. Rinpoche explained that a regular discipline was more important than the length of time practiced. He instructed me to sit two times a day for only 10 minutes each, and to start this practice with a few repetitions of the well-known Tibetan mantra, om mani padme hum. He gave me a picture of a Kagyu lineage master to put on a shrine, along with six little bronze bowls to fill with water and a string of beads, called a mala, to count repetitions of the mantra. When I followed these instructions at home, I felt at last a confidence in practice, and a stability of mind that I had not before been able to achieve.
On my last visit to KTD before moving to Woodstock, I requested Rinpoche to give me the empowerment for the Green Tara puja, the public meditation observed every day at 5:00 a.m. Green Tara is the female deity sometimes called the "mother of the buddhas," who is most revered by Tibetan practitioners. She represents at the same time motherly love and profound wisdom, and is often called "Drolma," or Lady. I always felt drawn to Tara practice, even though it was so difficult and demanding that few of the American residents at KTD made it to the early morning prayers, preferring to attend the other ceremonies offered later in the day.
Rinpoche agreed to give me the lung empowerment, which would consist of his reciting the text and giving me a blessing. I came to his room equipped with the traditional white scarf and an offering. I put the scarf around his neck and gave him the envelope with my offering, and he returned the scarf and put it around my neck. Then we talked for a few moments. He repeated how pleased he was with the work I had done for the Portland Coalition. He said that I had helped a lot of people, and this made him very happy. He also approved my success in following the meditations that he had given me earlier. We began the empowerment by reciting a few traditional prayers, including the refuge prayer. Then Rinpoche held on his lap a copy of the Green Tara puja and, holding it, recited by memory the chant of "21 Praises," which is the heart of the practice. When doing the puja, one repeats these 21 Praises first 2 times, then 3 times, and finally 7 times. In general, the 21 Praises extol all the varied qualities of Tara, praising both her wisdom and her compassionate action. When he had finished, Rinpoche touched the top of my head with the manuscript, and gave it to me. He then bumped the top of my head with his head, a traditional Tibetan gesture of affection.
I practiced the Green Tara sadhana at home so that by the time I finally arrived in Woodstock I knew a little bit more about what I was doing. After I arrived, I rented an apartment in town, as I still did not feel comfortable with the secular residents at KTD. Now that I had finally received empowerment to perform a major practice, I felt less inclined to renounce everything else. I had never really wanted to be a nun. In any case, for over a year I arose before dawn and drove up the mountain in pitch blackness to practice Green Tara with 2 or 3 other students, led by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche. I found this deeply moving, and because the energies aroused by sadhana are carefully channeled, every day my mental stability increased. The structure of the practice, and the physical elements of it - chanting, hand gestures, movements with the bell and dorje, and the gifts of torma at the end - all had a grounding effect that brought the wisdom aspect of prayer together with the action aspect of compassion. In vajrayana Buddhism, it is believed that performing tantric practices can bring about transformations in one's mind and body - not anything new and different, but a rechanneling of conflicting emotions and other imperfections to healthy and enlightened versions of the same energies. That, of course, was what I was looking for. All of these years I had looked for a way to achieve recovery from the manic episodes that had disrupted my life so badly.
As I continued my daily prayers, I began to notice changes in my behavior. My thinking did not change and my beliefs remained the same. But I began to notice that, when I became deeply involved in practice, particularly the 21 Praises, something happened in my brain and body that could be described as a "rewiring." This might be explained as a movement of the "winds," or spiritual energies, or as simply a rerouting of habitual pathways in the nervous system. In any case, although I did not feel fundamentally different in any way, I noticed that other people reacted to me differently - I seemed to be less of a threat to them and to inspire trust in others. My mind was more stable and serene, and less crowded with anxious thoughts. I noticed that I had remained free from psychosis for two full years, including the year that I had practiced at home. This was twice as long as I had ever remained stable before.
Encouraged at this improvement, I began to look for volunteer work in the Woodstock community. At first I worked for a warm line in town. Then I discovered that there was a small peer support group for mental health consumers in Poughkeepsie, the location of the state hospital where I was incarcerated several years before. I joined the group, and became one of its leaders. Once again, we formed a non-profit organization that became a model for other groups around the state. When we opened our first office and drop-in center, Khenpo Rinpoche came and conferred a blessing on our new facilities. He again told me how pleased he was that I was doing this work.
Soon I was no longer able to keep up my early morning drives to KTD. But I did continue my Green Tara practice, doing it at home for an hour and a half each morning. It stood me in good stead. I found that, even while doing the very public and stressful work of our consumer-run group, I managed to relate to other people with a calm and equanimity that I had not been able to muster with the Coalition. I continued in this work for another four years, until the New York group also fell prey to infighting and power struggles, and I left to take a job as therapist with a Buddhist-based mental health program in another state. At that point, I had been free of manic episodes for over six years.
Discipline Resumed
Ironically, the Buddhist treatment program turned out to be a disappointment, for I found myself in the same kind of conflict with people there as I had experienced at Karma Choling and with my study group in Maine. As a "provider" myself, I felt alienated from the peer advocacy that had been rewarding in the past, and I let my Dharma practice slide. I could no longer bring myself to chant all of the Tibetan words that now seemed alien to me.
Not surprisingly, within a couple of years my mind took off for "parts unknown," and I endured another manic episode that resulted in eviction from my apartment and another hospitalization. Resigning from my job, I moved to Florida, where I had some consulting work, and where I had a connection with yet another drop-in center in Fort Lauderdale. I chose to live in rural Florida, in a quiet apartment overlooking a lake. I still did not resume my Dharma practice, not really knowing how to get back to it, but I found that living in peace and solitude was an important component to maintaining my mental stability. I also resumed taking lithium, which I had cut off just before the manic episode. I began doing some work for the South Florida drop-in center, while still living in my retreat in the country. All went well for nearly five years, and I maintained my sanity. Then, all of a sudden, the drop-in center seemed to implode with employee conflicts, pursuits of power and mean-spiritedness. I lost my job and once again it seemed that everything I had worked for over the years had crumbled.
I realized that it was time to go back to KTD and take a refresher course in Dharma practice. Embarrassed that I had been away so long, I tentatively arranged for a weeklong visit. I was apprehensive as I drove to Woodstock from the airport, but once I reached KTD, I felt as if I were home again. Nothing had changed. When I talked with Rinpoche, I found that even he was the same! He was somewhat heavier than before, but looked to be in excellent health. I was the one who had changed, for I was much older now, nearly 60, and suffering from osteoarthritis, a handicap I did not have before. I was greeted graciously by the KTD residents, many of whom had been there years ago, and who remembered events as if they occurred only yesterday. Best of all, they treated me with the respect given a senior practitioner.
I explained to Rinpoche what had happened with my work as a peer advocate, and I confessed the difficulty I had in getting back to practice. As always, he was sympathetic and kind, and he instructed me in prayers that were less demanding than the hour-and-a-half long sadhana that I had done before. Before I returned to Florida, he gave me a gift that would help me with my practice and remind me of him and my friends at KTD. It is a silver amulet on a red cord that I now wear every day.
Back in my peaceful and solitary home, I continue to do my new practice. Even though it is not as strenuous as the long Green Tara I did before, it has, as before, helped me to stabilize my mind and to present myself to others in a way that is beneficial. Although I do not feel particularly wise or holy - or even-tempered, for that matter - my friends and co-workers often tell me that they admire my calm and serenity. This amazes me, but I take it as the best way to gauge whether my practice is working. As long as I can be helpful to other people and maintain my own well being, I will be satisfied. I have now been free of psychosis for over 15 years, with the one exception of the episode in Massachusetts. I hope that at long last I have lived up to the implications of my refuge name, Karma Tsultrim Zangmo. After all, "discipline" is my middle name, and it is through the discipline of daily practice that I found safety and well being. Through helping other people I found a way to see the basic goodness in both myself and others.
(First published in Spirituality and Mental Health by Philip J. Barker (Editor), Poppy Buchanan-Barker (Editor), Whurr Pub Ltd., February 2004, ISBN: 1861563922)