My journey with Transcendental Meditation.
After frantically starting 8 audiobooks and 5 hard copies on several topics very recently, I stumbled upon the title — “The Surrender Experiment.” For someone who has sought answers in books, and read over 26 books in one year once, perfectly timed with cyclothymic bipolar moods, books are the answers. I see books as signs and guiding posts. This one, I committed to more than an hour.
The chapter- “from absolute peace to absolute turmoil” was the one that got me hooked.
Michael A. Singer was telling me my own story with meditation and my grappling anxiety that had me defeated again, despite my strict two-month practice. When my peace developed cracks, my beginner’s luck started to run out. I wasn’t my old self (I will share more about the amazing changes in my life) but I was somewhere in between my best and the old self. I know I wasn’t going back for sure, but the meditation wasn’t as deep as I wanted it to be. My teacher reminded me that the benefits must be judged by the day-to-day life and the progress over a while, but I was rushing it. I wanted more out of it!
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu
As Michael shares his experience, he echoes mine. I will never leave this place was what I confidently told myself. I never wanted to betray the transcendence stillness, the peace I loved that more than life itself. I looked forward to it, I set out time, I joined the group meditation religiously. But why?
Why did I decide to meditate in the first place?
Most things that I decided to learn were Zen decisions- I have not researched the following classes before signing up — Acting, Standup Comedy, and Screenwriting at Rekindle, Improv 101 at CSZ Fremont. Those were just a whim and standup comedy was life-changing.
That was the first time I decided to share my diagnosis publicly, at Pike Place, to an audience of more than 255. And I WAS funny! The same instinct led me to Transcendental Meditation- TM for short.
2021 Christmas was one of the hardest but in hindsight the most pivotal times of my life. I had recently gotten a second round of interview with a company in New York. The city of my dreams, where I thought I belonged because it’s the city that never sleeps. And that stirred a spiral that was going to change my life. I had initially refused to continue the process because I, for one time in my life, wanted to stay somewhere for love, an illusion that shatters later on anyway.
Yet, they reached out again and I surrendered. The thought of going and living in New York, on several occasions, has kept me alive in the past. It’s brought me back from several dark places. But my life must have been resentful towards me to show me that even if I move I won’t be happy. Or more like, I questioned, very honestly, WILL I BE HAPPY THEN? And my rule of asking “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a NO” never killed me like this before.
My relationship with Marijuana took a very dark turn during that time. My doctor had told me to quit smoking it but I had just gotten myself promoted from the oil pens to joints. It was when I craved a cigarette that I decided to quit smoking and move to edibles instead. While I was briefly proud of setting this boundary, that was a dangerous experiment.
Obsessive compulsiveness is one of the many “curses” of Bipolar disorder.
And my indulgence with the edibles was just a loop that kept repeating with every obsessive desire to just numb my feelings of guilt because this was the first-ever Christmas I decided to skip. I was paralyzed and wanted to make sure I stayed that way. If you want to know what happens when you take too many edibles, just google it. I can skip to the part where I thought I MUST admit myself to a psychic ward. But I learned that you can check yourself in but not check yourself out. It’s not the amazon go of mental health. With my dog being my responsibility, I decided to resort to calling the nurse line and crisis hotline. This was the third day since Christmas, and leading up to my call with the nurse, I was believing that my worst bipolar episode is here and I WILL DIE..season finale?
My almost ‘addict self’ started to look up psychedelics instead, only to stumble upon one line from Tim Ferris that pointed me to Transcendental Meditation. He said that the feeling is the same. I was just chasing the feeling. I was sitting on the floor awkwardly by the door and I paid for my TM classes on my phone, and without researching much, I had yet again picked the second suggestion by google. I developed this instinct to go for the second ad on google a while back, wondering if the first one was just those who paid the most.
My First Session
“I have bipolar disorder hence I am here.” After so many people with my condition talked about TM as a life-saving gift, I was convinced. I will not share anything on the technique because it’s best learned through the teacher and the well-designed course that took decades to shape. The session ended with me feeling light as a feather. I had taken a bus amidst Seattle Snowmageddon and as I commuted back, I felt a huge change. I LOVED the bus ride. I was HIGH!
It was scary, interesting, new and I went into a deep mediation again that afternoon. I truly tasted what going beyond means. My brain got addicted to it and that kept me on the right path.
I quit weed, I quit alcohol, my screen time was down by 83% and the first couple of months, I NEVER skipped my prescribed twice a day practice.
Some of the biggest changes besides quitting the vices I noticed was —
I felt full after a small portion of a meal. I didn’t need to eat to fill the void. My speech was soft, I had not known what it’s like to not have pressured speech in a very long time. I was getting more done and I was detached from consequences and rejections. Most importantly, I was open to life. I listened to Alan Watts extensively during that time because this was the first time I was truly listening to him telling me to surrender to the universe and trust that it’s on my side.
With a spiritual journey come the spiritual tests.
“I don’t want to feel sad, I don’t want to feel angry,” I told myself as I processed my breakup during one of the worst mood disorder pill reaction phases of my recent past. “It’s my meds, not me” I realized after this pill made me cry just looking at balconies. Yearning for balconies and the nostalgia for the time I have never but could spend in my balcony choked me to tears. Insane? It is! Yet I kept going? Why? Meditation. I decided to accept the spiritual tests and detach myself from the outcomes of my endeavors over and over again.
My Bipolar Disorder is not going away but I can come back to meditation anytime.
This truth is the one that I hide under the rug that I sometimes hide under as well. Meditation- It’s not a fix but Paul Dalio mentioned that he met someone who practiced TM for over 20 years and felt happy 80% of the time. (Check out his movie- Touched with fire, and the book by the same name).
That’s a bold statement- “I am happy” is Not the one my psychiatrist wants to hear, I learned when I explained that I was “high” on my meditation and he decided to up my medication. However, my focus was improved, I was getting more done if that’s what I intended to do but my newly found appreciation for doing NOTHING was what made me a whole person. I realized that no matter where I go, I show up as my whole self. If a part of me is struggling or the one I am ashamed of, it’s not going to let me live fully in the moments where I go.
I was healing!
Fast track today as I write this story, the inspiration was born from my breakdown at my therapy session where I cried A LOT and decided to just meditate sincerely after not keeping it up for a week. I have scrambled recently, complained that I can’t even think things through because I am short on time, yet I did a lot more than I was expected to do.
The tragedy with those of us who live with invisible illnesses is that we have a hard time appreciating ourselves. We are harsh on ourselves. So I decided to journal in the third person. Mentioning how “Mehar” feels brought whole new respect back for me.
Today I cried in therapy, took my dog to the dog park, ran two miles, cooked two healthy meals, entered ketosis, watched 2 hours of travel documentary, listened to 3 hours of “The Surrender Experiment”, cleaned my house for about 30 minutes and shared my story with someone who could use some inspiration by overcoming my writer’s block.
And meditated for 1.5 hours!
