Chapter 20: Acupuncture, Relaxed Wanderer

The needles were thin and I could barely feel them go through my skin.  She used them on many parts of my body and I had some on my face; above my nose and on my forehead.  She was treating my depression symptoms and for pain in my lower back from a herniated disc.  I laid quietly listening to the music and completely relaxed.  It was a restful, rejuvenating experience.  After the half hour quiet time she came in, removed the needles, and rubbed Dragon Balm (an external analgesic) on my skin.  The balm was warm and then cool and the scent was invigorating.  (Dragon Balm can help relieve a headache.  I rub a small amount on my temples and it helps soothe the pain away.)

After my first acupuncture session I felt calm and looked forward to seeing if I would be able to come off antidepressant medication and feel good without it.  I had researched treating depression with acupuncture on the Internet and there were many case histories of it being successful.  I started lowering the dose of my antidepressant and began taking a combination of herbs called Relaxed Wanderer Formulation.

My first acupuncture appointment was in the month of July.  I was lowering my antidepressant dose extremely slowly because I have experienced withdrawal symptoms from every psychiatric medication I have stopped taking.  My acupuncture sessions were relaxing and enjoyable for about three months.  Then I started to notice my thinking was changing and I wasn't feeling as good.  Two more herbs were added to my regimen and I don't even remember what they were.  I started to write down how I was feeling and what I was thinking.

I no longer looked forward to my appointments.  The half hour quiet time seemed long and I felt anxious for my provider to come back into the room so I could leave.  I was hoping these feelings would pass and the acupuncture itself, and the herbs would begin to work.  I lost the desire to do things I usually enjoyed, things that were important to me lost their value, I felt tired and irritable, and began feeling I had never accomplished anything in my life.  These are depression symptoms for me, and I knew the acupuncture and herbs weren't working.  Soon after, thoughts of suicide plagued my mind and I knew I needed to go back on the antidepressant.  That is what I did the first part of December.

I was disappointed acupuncture did not help my depression symptoms, but I felt fortunate the antidepressant worked for me after going back on.  My doctor had warned me that for some patients the antidepressant doesn't "kick in" after restarting it.  Fortunately, acupuncture did work on the pain in my lower back.  After 4-5 treatments per month, for 5 months, my back was pain free.  It was agile and felt back to normal.  That outcome was welcomed! 

It was fascinating at first to feel the symptoms of depression returning.  I observed my thinking slowly changing.  Other things in my life during this time hadn't changed.  Without the help of the antidepressant the disease gradually took hold again and within five months the disease was in control.  By December the fascination had changed to misery!  The results of this experience did not talk me out of trying the amino acid therapy many years later.  At this point, I believe I will stay on antidepressant medication long term.

Last Friday morning I made the move up to 150 mg of Effexor XR.  The gradual rise of the dosage has seemed slow-paced, but I am still not feeling any side effects that are strong enough to bother me.  I was taking Effexor several years ago and the side effect of nausea never went away.  The medication was effective on my depression symptoms, but the nausea was constant and irritating so my doctor changed my antidepressant to Zoloft.  

My psychiatrist at the Amen Clinic believes I had a problem with nausea because I started on too high of a dose, and increased it too quickly.  I am relieved I have not felt nauseated.  I am taking approximately 19 mg of Luvox twice per day.  The tablets are getting smaller and smaller.

Normal Day, Please Hasten Your Arrival!

  

Chapter 18: "Fulfillment, Peace, Life in all its Fullness."

Sixteen days on Effexor XR, seven of them on the higher dose of 75 mg in the morning.  I decided to not lower Luvox quite so quickly.  I am taking 25 mg in the morning and 37.5 mg in the afternoon.  In three more days I will increase Effexor XR to 112.5 mg and lower Luvox to 25 mg on both doses.  I have had short periods of time where I feel the depression symptoms are lifting.  I am still not feeling side effects or withdrawal, which is a huge positive!

I am still hopeful.  I am trying to take life a day at a time.  Prayer and faith in my Higher Power to give me direction are sustaining me.  Listening to Eckhart Tolle every day helps me stay focused on the Now, not spending much time in the past or making up a possible future.  Chapter 8 in, The Power of Now, A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Tolle explains what he believes salvation is.  

"True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness.  It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself.  It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence.  In theistic language, it is to 'know God' --- not as something outside you but as your own innermost essence.  (I believe this is my spirit, which Tolle calls the inner being.  I believe my spirit is a literal offspring of my Higher Power.)  True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life from which all that exists derives its being.

True salvation is a state of freedom --- from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging.  It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.  Your mind is telling you that you cannot get there from here.  Something needs to happen, or you need to become this or that before you can be free and fulfilled.  It is saying, in fact, that you need time --- that you need to find, sort out, do, achieve, acquire, become, or understand something before you can be free or complete.  

You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation.  You think that you can't get there from where and who you are at this moment because you are not yet complete or good enough, but the truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there.  You 'get' there by realizing that you are there already.  You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God.  So there is no only way to salvation:  Any condition can be used, but no particular condition is needed.  However, there is only one point of access: the Now.  There can be no salvation away from this moment.

There is nothing you can ever do or attain that will get you closer to salvation than it is at this moment.  This may be hard to grasp for a mind accustomed to thinking that everything worthwhile is in the future.  Nor can anything that you ever did or that was done to you in the past prevent you from saying yes to what is and taking your attention deeply into the Now.  You cannot do this in the future.  You do it now or not at all."

Fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness ... a state of freedom --- from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency, wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging ... freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.  This is what I want.  I am getting better at Living in the Now everyday.

Chapter 14: Normal Day, The Power of Now

I am longing for a regular, normal day.  I want to feel well; a day where survival is not my main goal. My sister has a quote on the bottom of her emails I like.  It says, "Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are," by Mary Jean Iron.  This is the full quote:  "Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.  Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart.  Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.  Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so.  One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return." 

I know in my soul that wanting a regular, normal day is not appreciating the day I am having.  This has been a challenge for me as I have been experiencing withdrawal symptoms from clonazepam, and healing depression.  I am trying to live in the moment, to be present.  I have been listening to the audio book ,The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.  Daily prayer, and the teachings in this book are sustaining me each day.  If you have read other posts on my blog you know I am a fan of Tolle.

On page 15 of, The Power of Now, A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Eckhart Tolle says, "The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement:  'I think, therefore I am.'  He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error:  to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking.  The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind.  Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being 'at one' and therefore at peace.  At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested --- at one with Being.  Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking.  What an incredible liberation this is!"

Tolle explains further what he means by living in a state of apparent separateness on page 31.  "Humans have been in the grip of pain for eons, ever since they fell from the state of grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being.  At that point, they started to perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, unconnected to the Source and to each other. . .Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long as you are unconscious, spiritually speaking."

More about pain on page 33, "The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment.  On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity.  The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind.  The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it.  In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer.  Or you may put it like this:  The more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering --- and free of the egoic mind."

How do we stop creating time?  On page 35 Tolle teaches, "Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.  Make the Now the primary focus of your life.  Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation.  Always say 'yes' to the present moment.  What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?  What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now?  Surrender to what is.  Say 'yes' to life --- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you."

I believe living in the Now and helping my "higher self" run my life (not my egoic mind) will help me feel better.  I don't think it will heal the disease of depression.  This disease is too severe for me.  I am trying every day to stop my mind from making up stories of how the future is going to be, and how my day is going to be.  This is very hard for me!  I am making a good effort in exploring every possible way to help me heal, and I am staying on my medication.  I am having a difficult time being patient.

Chapter 5: A New Earth, Changing The Way I Think

About this time, I started listening to the CDs of, A New Earth; Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle. The things I learned in this book helped me change the way I think. I had this book several years before I read it. I first heard about it when it was one of Oprah's Book Club Books.

Changing the way I think, changed my life.  In a section titled, THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK, Eckhart Tolle questions if humanity is ready for a transformation of consciousness.  He asks, "Can they defy the gravitational pull of materialism and materiality and rise above identification with form that keeps the ego in place and condemns them to imprisonment within their own personality?"  He believes the possibility of such a transformation has been the central message of Buddha, Jesus, and others.

The author states, "This book's main purpose is not to add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness, that is to say, to awaken.  In that sense, this book is not 'interesting'.  Interesting means you can keep your distance, play around with ideas and concepts in your mind, agree or disagree.  This book is about you.  It will change your state of consciousness or it will be meaningless."

This book had meaning for me.  I learned the ego is an illusory sense of self that becomes the basis for misinterpretations of reality, thought processes, interactions, and relationships.  If I can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves.  The egoic mind is the incessant voice in my head, the stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it.  These thoughts are often not true, but if I don't question them I will feel the emotions the thoughts evoke.  Jean-Paul Sartre said, "The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks."

Learning about the pain-body was especially interesting to me.  Eckhart Tolle describes it this way, "The pain-body is a semiautonomous energy-form that lives within most human beings, an entity made up of emotion.  It has its own primitive intelligence, not unlike a cunning animal, and its intelligence is directed primarily at survival.  Like all life-forms it periodically needs to feed---to take in new energy---and the food it requires to replenish itself consists of energy that is compatible with its own. . .Any emotionally painful experience can be used as food by the pain-body.  That's why is thrives on negative thinking as well as drama in relationships.  The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness."