I’m sitting next to a brown and bald Santa Claus. Type. But instead of asking me what I want for Christmas, she asks me, “Who are you?”
It took a long time, a plane from North America to India and several times mental/ Supernatural mystical / kundalini episodes to finally sit me next to HW Poonja – this prolific and spiritual orange-clad teacher based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
Carefree depression and the terrifying and threatening thought that I always feel this suicidal despair is what drove me there. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but I say that it is suffering.
I don’t care what you call it
After several spiritual experiences that sent me into psychotic episodes, I was finally hospitalized, prescribed medication, and offered treatment plans and language tests. The doctors told me that I had mild temporal lobe epilepsy and acute bipolar 1 disorder with generalized. anxiety chaos
The help offered could have been helpful, even comforting, even if I had been in a different mindset, given a different perspective, and offered curiosity instead of prescriptions from health care providers, or more accurately, from the health care system. But I wasn’t.
So I refused the diagnosis and I refused medicine. Instead, I bought an open plane ticket with my then-boyfriend (12 years older than me) and prepared to be enlightened. Preparedness isn’t really accurate – dreaming, burning, hurting is more like enlightenment.
Punjaji – as he is remembered, the “ji” is a sign of respect – was born in 1910, was a teacher Advaita Vedanta and student of Ramana Maharshi. Punja started recruiting students first from his home country, India and then from all over the world. I was one of them from all over the world.
He was kind, smiling and sometimes impatient and angry. He spoke in riddles that made you lose your mind. But he also presented clear concepts that changed your perception. Just sitting next to him, you would be painted with peace.
I wrote to him before I left for India, when I was an open-hearted and easily impressionable 26-year-old. I saw him as my path to freedom from suffering. Part spiritual retreat, part serious quest. 100% last resort.
Personal account
Severe depression manifests itself in many ways. I didn’t see my depression as a mental illness. It was an existential crisis. Personal account manifestation physical and psychological. The question “what is the meaning of all this – life?” I had it hidden in my head for at least two years without stopping. I’m not sure what caused it. It’s a chicken and egg scenario.
Did life feel meaningless because of depression, or was I depressed because life felt meaningless? Either way, one fed the other.
I searched for answers in all forms: the higher power of AA and OA, self help books, conversations therapyscream therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, Reiki, psychologists, a sugar free dietwild dance. But those questions were buzzing in my mind like mosquitoes. “What is the meaning of life? What does it all mean?”
BI (Before India), in my blue bedroom, my father and I were once again talking about my struggle to understand this world and why we are here (it exists on the planet, not in my room). He warned: “People have been asking these questions for thousands of years and never found an answer. If you ask yourself that, you’re driving yourself crazy.” Incredibly accurate and sadly predictable.
Psychiatrists told me that what I was experiencing was clinical depression and that there was a chemical imbalance at work – the running theory at the time; it was later bipolar disorder.
But I saw it as a spiritual quest to become more aware of my true self. And it was.
Both can be true
Over the years I have learned that it can be both. For me, it has to be both. Because relative and transcendental are the same. Not one and the same, but instead they form a whole.
I can have two truths at once – medical and spiritual. One does not cancel the other.
A mental crisis can be an aspect of a mental health problem and can be helped by medical treatment. A mental health issue can be part of a spiritual crisis and can be helped through spiritual practices and support. They both demanded the restoration of my true identity and personality. Mental illness and spirituality is cut. Not for everyone. But for me they definitely do.
Personal Perspectives Important Readings
I increase my awareness and expand my consciousness. Think about it. Learn. The difference is that it is not based on pain and questions; now it comes from a place of curiosity and satisfaction.
© Victoria Maxwell.
