"Be steadfast in yoga, devotee. Perform your duty without attachment, remaining equal to success or failure. Such equanimity of mind is called Yoga."
- Bhagavad-Gita1
Every now and then energy and information flow becomes more than just an idea, it becomes an experience. We no longer put words to the experience that color our perception of it. We experience the flow, not our reaction to or interpretation of the flow. Our resistance ceases and along with it the suffering is removed. For the moment at least, everything is equally beautiful and equally valuable.
This ability to experience directly instead of filtering it as disease and health, pain and pleasure, loss and gain,2 or any of the dualities of the world is called Equanimity. Some call it bliss, ecstasy, samadhi, nirvana, or any of a number of names. These names are for actual states of consciousness, not just concepts to be pondered.
Equanimity means even-minded under all conditions. When in equanimity, our wisdom guides all of our actions and we stop seeing one state as more valuable than any other. Our preferences cease to exist and we feel blissful in all circumstances.
The state of equanimity is revered by all religions as the ultimate state of being. Often thought reserved for only the saints to experience, the saints themselves say that it is within every one of us to experience it. When we experience them for even just a moment, our lives change forever. In that moment, we have had a glimpse of reality unfiltered by our delusion that needs things to be the way we want them to be.
Many of the greatest people in history have achieved equanimity through the same states that we are told to avoid. Many even credit deep depression as one of the clearest paths to get there. In The Depression Advantage3 I detailed how Saint Francis, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Anthony of the Desert, and Milerepa all found equanimity through depression. Equanimity for them was the result of facing their condition and learning from it instead of avoiding it. Saint John of the Cross even wrote a book called The Dark Night of the Soul4 that details the ways that depression is a divine path.
I repeated a quote by Saint Teresa of Avila5 almost constantly for nearly a year; "The pain is still there. It bothers me so little now that I feel my soul is served by it." Wrestling with that idea led to incredible insights for me.
One of the things I struggled with is that Saint Teresa was clearly affected by her condition. There were long periods where she was bedridden and in extreme pain. What I learned from Saint Teresa is that my body, mind, and emotions may be very bothered, but when I focus on my soul I am in bliss. From equanimity (bliss) I can see that pain is part of bliss just as much as pleasure, happiness, and all other conditions.
Central to my beliefs is that every moment of our lives is an opportunity to be in bliss, but we avoid those with the most potential because we think that the difficult experiences need to be removed first. We are closer to experiencing bliss during the difficult times, not further from it. For most of us, we mistakenly think bliss means happiness. We cannot truly know bliss until we see it in our pain. Once we find bliss in pain, we find it everywhere. I now interpret Teresa's quote as: "The pain is still there. It doesn't bother my soul at all and helps me to be in bliss.”
It takes equanimity to fully understand how bipolar or depression can be seen as an advantage. Once we begin to look at depression and mania from the perspective of equanimity, we see how such richness of experience brings insight and understanding that is beyond the capacity for those without such a perspective to even imagine.
Equanimity is often misunderstood to mean the same as the old definition of stability. Many people talk about achieving a state where there is only calmness, no ups or downs. They interpret it to mean being in a tranquil place that allows people to relax, to escape from the stresses and strains of everyday life and to "recharge their batteries.” Although it is helpful to occasionally remove ourselves from the conditions that create stress for us as it helps us to achieve some peace, equanimity is the ability to remain peaceful while the world is crashing around us.
Equanimity is there all of the time. You don't have to create anything to feel it, you simply remove the delusion that is keeping you from seeing it. The problem is the desire to have things our way is so strong that it is not so simple. You need at first to actively try to remove the thoughts and desires that are hiding the equanimity from you.
It is easy to feel equanimity when things are going well. On a sunny day when everything is great it is easy to see the beauty in it. The secret is to find it during a bad flow of energy and information. Once you do you can find it everywhere.
Equanimity is a natural reaction to meditation and the practice of separating our experience of the flow of energy and information from our reaction to it. If it has not happened on its own at least once by the time you reach Stability Stage, you need to start actively looking for it. If you have had the experience you need to find ways to have it more often.
An exercise that will help is to look for opportunities to practice and then pounce on them as the gifts that they are. Next time you stub your toe, bang your shin, or any other physical accident, try to stay in your place of peace and experience the intense flow of pain as your brain receives the signals. You are practicing the presence of peace all the time or at least have developed the ability to go to it right away, aren't you? If you can hold on to the peace while feeling the intensity of the pain, you are feeling equanimity. You will realize that jumping up and down and cursing are reactions to the stimulus, not the experience itself. The intense pain is feedback for you to base decisions on. It would be prudent to take a look and decide whether to get the injury treated, but cursing will only reinforce the idea that we should avoid feeling things that would otherwise have helped us make good decisions.
If you gained skills in experiencing physical pains with equanimity, it is time to work on mental pains. Try to explore thoughts that disturb you with a rational mind while practicing the presence of peace at the same time. If we are in Self-Mastery we should be able to think through issues from a place of peace instead of avoiding them because they disturb us. This is so much harder because physical pain goes away much faster than it takes to resolve mental issues.
Many of the other tools build up our abilities around this. Self-Mastery is about putting them to the real test and proving it. Can we separate our feeling of the flow of energy and information from our reactions to it? Can we see it as equally valuable as any other experience? Can we find value in every moment? Can we do it during the difficult times and not just when things are going well? Can we ponder difficult issues for months without losing our cool? Can we choose behaviors that are based on wisdom instead of emotions that are controlling us? Equanimity is the culmination of all of the exercises. It is also the reward for doing them.
My own experience with depression illustrates this principle. As I got older my depressions got much deeper and more frequent. My understanding increased, yet I was still debilitated by them and was even in great danger of suicide.
Several years ago I was in a very deep depression during a vacation in Cancun with my family. Although the physical pain was not so great, the mental component got the best of me. My mind was stuck in a loop that was a combination of obsessive thoughts and visions of my own death. The spiritual crisis was that life had no meaning and was not worth living. My symptoms were much more complex, of course, but the thoughts about killing myself were what did me in.
One positive outcome of my suicide attempt is that I began to pay very close attention to my depressions and began to understand them very deeply. I chose to analyze the symptoms and try to become expert in both the experience and the choices of how to react to them. As I learned more about myself and my condition, I slowly gained power over depression. I found that I could handle the lesser states easily and could even function acceptably in states that could clearly be compared to situational depression for "normal” people.
My understanding helped me to write The Depression Advantage and give great detail of the various levels of depression. Yet, I was still a long way from being able to see it in the light that the saints mentioned. During that time I was also functioning better and better, although my state was a fairly deep depression. I was thinking that I was "rising above” the pain and wrote about how the saints had done the same thing.
Life is not as simple as having a "breakthrough” that changes everything, but there are highlights that stick out and can seem like "breakthrough moments.” Mine came during a keynote talk that I was giving for San Bernardino County Mental Health Department's annual dinner. As I was waiting for the event to start and setting up the recording equipment, I realized that I was in a state almost exactly the same as the one that nearly took my life in Cancun.
I am one of the rare people who have no fear of public speaking and usually don't even give it a thought. This time I was extremely nervous about my ability to give the talk and so was my wife Ellen. Right up to the very second that I was called, I had serious doubts that I could even stand up.
As I stood up to face the crowd, I started off telling them that I was having the deepest depression of my life and was not sure how it would go, but was going to give it a try. I related my story about Cancun and proceeded to go to my usual speaking points.
As I got into a groove, my fear went away while the symptoms of depression actually increased. My paranoia told me I was doing a horrible job, yet the video and reaction of the crowd said it went pretty well. It may not have been my best talk ever, but it was good enough for some of it to have made it to our YouTube Channel!1
My experiences previous to my "breakthrough talk” was the basis for my thoughts about insight, freedom, and stability because I was directly experiencing the benefits of the wisdom that I was gaining. I was also talking about the possibility of equanimity even though my own experiences of it was fleeting at best. My breakthrough was that I could maintain some semblance of equanimity in extreme states and still perform my responsibilities. I began to realize that the saints didn't "rise above the pain” or make it go away. They got to a point that they were experiencing it fully, but the pain was no longer controlling their reactions.
When my next manic episode came, I found that I could make the same adjustments that I apply to depressive episodes. I found that I was truly experiencing equanimity in all states and not valuing one over the other. I was also functioning the same no matter what state I was in.
The death of my dog was the final piece of the puzzle for me. We had Kriya for 14 years and were both very close to her. She had struggled with cancer for the last couple years of her life, and finally one day could not handle it any longer. The doctor examined her and said, "Have you thought about end of life for her?” I looked over at Ellen, then back to the doctor, and said, "Is there anything you can do to remove Kriya's pain for a while so that we can prepare for it?” I knew that we needed to be there for it and that it was going to take some preparation to be able to face it.
Holding Kriya during the procedure was exquisitely painful, but was also very beautiful for me. I was so moved by the experience that I found profound meaning in having been through it. It helped me to see that equanimity really is in every moment
The Depression Advantage should not be misunderstood as the ability to "rise above” the pain. The advantage is that we have the ability to experience it more deeply, while having the wisdom to choose how to react.
It is impossible to have a life worth living that completely eliminates depression. The "cure" for depression is not the removal of all symptoms. The "cure" is to get to the point that the symptoms lose their power over us. We cannot get to that point by avoiding it. Equanimity means that even though the symptoms are still there, we no longer see them as negative.
Depression is just as much a part of bliss as any other state. Peace, love, and joy are naturally felt, even when you are also experiencing great pain. If you read what Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, or Saint Francis had to say, it will become clear: bliss is not the opposite of duality, it includes duality as a subset.
Picture two small circles next to each other. One is pleasure and the other is pain. The common concept is that we get to a point that is outside of them both and move to another circle where there is only peace, love, and joy. Bliss is incorrectly thought of as beyond the duality, a place where pleasure and pain do not exist.
Now picture a larger circle with the pleasure and pain inside of it. Picture it with all conditions inside of it: pleasure, pain, gain, loss, happiness, sadness, health, illness, etc. If you focus on the big circle, you are in bliss, even though you are still experiencing some of the elements inside. If you lose the perspective of the big circle, you feel only the small circles, and the pain seems more intense.
Some people think that the problem is that we have wrong thinking. They propose that we catch ourselves thinking sad thoughts and replace them with happy thoughts, as if that is going to change the picture. It is the same as focusing on the two small circles. We will never fully understand our condition until we begin to focus on the big circle and find meaning in our experiences. As long as you think that sad thoughts are an illness you will not find the advantage of your condition.
- Yogananda,Paramahansa, The Bhavagad Gita, translation, 2003 Self-Realization Fellowship, CA, 2:48
- Yogananda, Paramahansa, The Autobiography of a Yogi, 1987, Self-Realization Fellowship, CA, p. 409
- Wootton, Tom, The Depression Advantage, 2007 Bipolar Advantage Publishers, CA
- Peers, E. Allison, The Dark Night of the Soul, translation, 1990 Random House, N.Y.
- Teresa of Avila: Mystical Writings, ed. Tessa Bielecki, 1999, Crossword Publishing Company, NY. p. 119
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