Sitting quiet is the best spiritual exercise[.]
~ Shri Gurudev Mahendranath, “The Londinium Temple Strain”
It is imperative that we take care of our bodies — most certainly including our nervous systems. It is, after all, very difficult to meditate through untreated pain or an anxiety attack.
Yet, especially as we age, that is precisely what we will have to do!
I wrote last time about my own recently discovered autism. It has been a journey, to say the least. I’ve learned a lot, most importantly gaining context for a lot of challenging patterns. There’s not a lot of medical intervention possible for autism, but increasing awareness of it, and a community of autistics sharing support, means a lot of freely available educational resources for those in need of it. The hardest lesson to come out of it, for me, has just been the brute fact that the aforementioned challenging patterns are, as literally as this can possibly be taken, hard-wired into my brain.
This is, by my lights, the karmic fruit I must eat in this lifetime, the “thorn in my flesh” that I cannot rid myself of no matter how hard I may resist. As someone who has always tried to remain as mentally independent as possible, this has been like a bucket of ice water over the head. But, importantly, it has re-emphasized a fundamental lesson: that sadhana happens in the midst of life and not as mere escapism.
One common feature of autism is difficulty processing a lot of sensory data at any one time. This is why many autistic people tend to be loners and prefer to interact with others one-on-one or in very small groups. We feel flooded by sense impressions and can respond to certain stimuli in what to others seems an exaggerated way. As a simple example, I have a “princess and the pea” response to a lot of socks; if the toe seam is too thick or if it curls under my toes even slightly, I find it to be distracting almost to the point of pain. Many autistic people have trouble eating foods with inconsistent textures. My mother and father like walnuts in their cookies and brownies, but even the best cookie becomes nearly inedible to me with the presence of walnuts, and I do not even dislike walnuts! To many people, this seems like we are just being picky or dramatic, but it isn’t a choice or something that repeated exposure will fix. It is just a consequence of how our brains process sensory input.
I belabor these simple examples to show that even such small things can present a real functional problem and, if that is true, just imagine what noisy environments, attempting to follow multiple voices in a conversation, bright lights, and other cognitively crowded situations mean for us. In my case, as with many, too much distraction actually results in what is often termed shutdown: a loss of ability to properly function. It feels as if the nerves themselves are laid bare on the surface of the skin, thinking becomes difficult or impossible, responses become robotic or even nonexistent, speech becomes impossible.
I recently had a multi-day run of this. Other than removing oneself from the situation as soon as possible and repairing to a dark, quiet place, there’s really not much that can be done for it. But I could, and did, sit with it. Though thinking was difficult, observing was not. Awareness is always available, because unalloyed Awareness is the closest we can get to naming our real Self-nature. So I was just Aware.
I’m not saying that it was fun or pleasant. My mind was wracked with anxiety. My body was tense but numb. I could barely string a sentence together. I felt guilt over my inability to be of any use to the people around me. At the same time, I was able to observe. I knew throughout that this was my brain doing brain things. Perhaps my brain works differently from yours, but it’s still just operating the way it does, and we all have to learn to make use of the instruments to hand.
Sitting quietly and observing my whole body-mind complex during a time of intense stress proved to be a deeply valuable spiritual practice. It showed me very dramatically the distinction between mind and Awareness, and forced me back upon myself.
Certainly, we all have times like this. Anxiety attacks, injuries, illnesses, depression — something which not merely throws you off balance but which sends you crashing down, makes you doubt that anything pleasant could ever happen again. Meditation is not an instant cure, but it is a cure. Truly, it is the only and final cure because it is the only thing which brings us back to that Void of Awareness out of which all of our experiences arise. In the meantime, the capacity to rest inwardly even when the whole body and mind, which we normally think of as everything about us, has gone haywire is of inestimable therapeutic value.
Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brain.n%27t.jpg