My name is Jonathan, and I live in Berkshire, England. I post as 5adja5b on Reddit.
From about age 17 through to my early thirties, I experienced depression and anxiety, including OCD, that at times was so acute that for a time I considered my twenties a ‘lost decade’; a kind of pained, wire-wool blur that in hindsight hardly felt real and was difficult to recall with clarity. The depression was at its worst between ages 18 and 25, during which time I would regularly and actively consider suicide.
Years later, in my thirties, I experienced how anxiety too could drive one to the point of despair and insanity: there were times where it was so befuddling that I didn’t know what was real and where again suicide felt like the only way out.
I spent a number of years on medication and trying various therapies, which may or may not have had some kind of effect but never seemed to address the root cause, whatever that was. At a certain point in my mid-twenties I decided enough was enough and, to an extent, reached out and somehow ‘switched off’ the suffering tap. From this point on, my life became somewhat more bearable, and the suicidal feelings were much less prevalent.
On my thirtieth birthday I remember weighing up the pros and cons of killing myself: I felt that if the coming decade were to be like the previous one, it was simply not worth it, with the negative having so far outweighed the positive. I made the choice not to; I think this was in part because I had a sense of hope that things would be better, and also because of the pain I felt a suicide would cause those who loved me.
The pain of these years was overwhelming!
In 2015, I went on a date with a girl who told me how she believed she was an adult with undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome, and how she felt that I too had the condition.
After doing some research, I felt she had a point, and so went on a months’-long journey ‘up the chain’ of NHS professionals who told me ‘probably not, but I can’t be sure – I’ll refer you to someone with more specialist experience.’
I eventually received a careful assessment from an Asperger’s specialist. She told me I was a borderline case, and offered to formally diagnose me if I felt it would help in my life.
After a week’s consideration, I declined the diagnosis, as ultimately I felt I was just ‘me’, whoever that was. Additionally, by this point of my life, I had come to a place of some acceptance, happiness, and peace – which probably contributed to the ‘borderline’ assessment. Had I been assessed in my twenties, I wonder if the diagnosis would have been firmer.
The lady who assessed me pointed me to some books on the condition itself, as well as literature on mental health issues, such as anxiety, from an Asperger’s perspective. Reading these was a relief. It explained and contextualised many of the feelings, behaviour and reactions in my life so far. I believe had I known about Asperger’s (or been diagnosed) at a younger age – known that there was at least a partial reason for my feeling different, isolated, socially awkward and left out, and, critically, that it wasn’t my fault – my experience in the previous decade would not have been as painful.
Incidentally, I doubt I’d come close to the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s these days.
I continued to explore books in a direction that became increasingly guided by the call of meditation. At the time, I think, I would have described myself as happier than I’d ever been, albeit perhaps in a conditional, shaky way. So I think my motivation for starting to meditate was that it just felt right, and almost obvious: a calming, peaceful, dignified and perhaps healing way of exploring the ‘spiritual but not religious’ nature with which I had long identified, and which had always felt as if it had something profound to say about the universe and existence, but had never been fully expressed. It also soon became about stress reduction, too.
It was with a growing sense of homecoming and joy that I realised here was a tool that could address what turned out to be two aspects of the same thing.
Firstly, it facilitated truthseeking; the exploration of the fundamental questions I had always had about reality, consciousness and existence. These questions had been guiding my life since I was a child. They led me initially to pursue a degree in Physics, which I dropped out of shortly before the end of the first year; after this, I felt maybe the more freeform, philosophical angle of English Literature (and, to be honest, the reduced workload) would better provide answers. This was the degree with which I graduated. (Tangentially, my depression was most acute throughout these university years). However, neither conventional science, nor conventional philosophy or thought, satisfactorily resolved the questions that remained as fundamental and unanswered as ever.
After graduating, I wrote and self-published two books – a post-apocalyptic, speculative-fiction novel, then, years later, an illustrated collection of poetry. Again, both were in many ways attempts to address the same questions, and here I believe I came to some understanding. For one, an intuitive connection was somewhat made between the nature of existence and meaning of life to the fundamental suffering I was experiencing, for years acutely but also in a vaguely dissatisfying way even at the happiest times.
This is the second aspect that increasingly became clear meditation would address: the fundamental suffering, the fundamental dissatisfaction, of existence. If most of us look closely, suffering actually seems to be ever-present, often as a vague sense of dissatisfaction, even in our happiest moments. Because those happy moments by definition never last and are inevitably followed by some form of come-down; and, even during those highs, there may well be a sense of wanting something even more, or some aspect of the experience that is not quite perfect; or perhaps there’s the subtle presence of mourning over the inevitably transient nature of good times and then the struggle and stress – the suffering – to one day return to them, only to lose them again some time later and repeat the cycle. One might pithily say, life is suffering; but does it have to be?
My formal meditation practice started in January 2016 with the excellent Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world. For beginners, I cannot recommend this book enough. It is written clearly and thoughtfully, and presented secularly, by people who know what they are talking about, and guides meditators through a range of genuine and varied practices. It also doesn’t ask too much of a practitioner; initially five minutes a day, with the expectation that people will see positive results after an eight week commitment.
After completing this eight week course myself, I was more persuaded than ever that there was something real and valuable here. I continued to read and explore and, following a recommendation on reddit, soon discovered the recently-published The Mind Illuminated.
The Mind Illuminated is the best meditation manual I have ever read; meticulous, thorough, and with the depth to guide people to advanced meditation practices and their fruits; yet understandable. Again, I cannot recommend it highly enough, although it will probably be best suited to a certain temperament. With TMI, my practice really took off.
I should also mention Rob Burbea’s Seeing That Frees, a book with which I have a mixed relationship, but which nonetheless carefully and poetically expresses something important to consider and explore.
Over time, it became clear that all the books I was reading were ultimately all vehicles for the Dharma, the teachings given by the Buddha that describe the nature of suffering, the mind and reality, and the ignorance that typically clouds our understanding of these totally interconnected themes; indeed, the ignorance that leads to the suffering in the first place.
Crucially, the dharma doesn’t just point out the issues. Its central purpose is to facilitate people to bring suffering to a permanent and lasting end, in this lifetime, through the dissolution of ignorance. It combines truth-seeking with ultimate well-being.
It is with relief, profound liberation, and joy that I feel able to say this path has satisfied in ways I had not previously imagined possible.
I am keen to do what I can to support others on their journey!
