This article was written by James Dear for Meditation New Zealand
Happiness...
For practically my entire life I have attempted to crack the code.
I jumped from one fix to the next, trying to squeeze as much fun out of it as possible, until it was exhausted. Upon facing the dark and empty void within, I desperately moved on to the next in a perpetual and insatiable chase that was rapidly leading me to an early grave.
In October 2018 that all changed….........
But we will get to that shortly.
Hindsight
I never realised how anxious I was as a child, so desperate for acceptance. This manifested in a lot of 'showing off.' Ironically I never seemed to fit in and often I would receive an undesirable outcome, being bullied. Kids are fickle and at that age you don’t know if what you’re experiencing is “normal” so you just put up with it. I, unconsciously, attempted to deal with it by binge eating unimaginable amounts of chocolate and biscuits. My parents owned a mini mart type set up, meaning sweets were readily available, so when I say a lot I mean a lot!
When I started secondary school I decided that I didn’t want to get bullied anymore. It seemed as though being the bully would likely be the solution, so on my first week I walked up to one of my classmates who was tying his shoelace and kicked him as hard as I could. This ended up in a huge fight with all the school watching and I ended up losing (which I well and truly deserved!). This was the beginning of a miserable few years which involved a lot of violence and ended up with me getting beaten by a large group of lads who were much older than me with a baseball bat.
It’s safe to say that I didn’t find any answers there.
Learning the hard way continued…
“I fell in love”
Everyone has suffered from their first puppy love. I am no exception. Rarely has any experience in my life compared to the pain of not being able to have “the one I loved”. I cried for 3 months straight and moped around for a couple of years. If only I’d have known that if I could have been with her I still wouldn’t have been happy.
I began smoking weed when I was around 13 and through doing so I made my first group of mates. Never before had I felt I belonged anywhere, but with this group of badly behaved misfits I seemed to fit in. I still remember the value of what it was to fit in. At the time it meant everything to me but I had no idea how vulnerable the desire to belong made me.
When I was 17 years old I was faced with a decision. My whole friend group started to use Class A drugs, and was very interested in doing so. I had absolutely no interest but in reality I had to choose between belonging to the group or not. The pain of being alone was so great that it seemed like a no brainer and I could not bear to spend a moment alone at that age. What makes this decision completely insane is that my mother had told me that if I did drugs there is a good chance I would die, and I believed her.
Spiralling Downwards
Not appreciating that I lived in a world of anxiety, drugs seemed to have all of the answers. When I used drugs my anxiety was masked. All of my problems seemed to fade away...
For a while.
In the material world, for every high there is a low - Despite following every high I would come crashing back down into the depths of darkness, my delusional mind always told me that the solution was to do more.
And even if I’d seen things in proper perspective, I honestly didn’t know any better way.
I lived in a world of ignorance and the drugs were my only tools. It got worse and worse. I needed to use more and more. I had no money and was left with no option but to start selling them to find my habit. This is one of the most regrettable decisions I’ve made in my life. Selling drugs temporarily masked some of my problems but paved the way to a complete loss of free will. I had plenty of money, an abundance of drugs, a tonne of 'so called' friends and I loved the power and popularity. Looking back I was using my friends and taking their money off them for my own personal gain, not to mention causing an immeasurable social disturbance. My karmic fruit was soon to follow.
Around the time of my 19th birthday I was involved in a police chase and caught for possession with intent to supply drugs, and I lost my driving license for driving under the influence. This put my parents mental health and their business through hell.
I avoided prison by the skin of my teeth.
I was completely out of control, a hopeless and insecure drug addict; and as if compelled by force, I continued down the same path. I’m not even touching the surface of how much destruction I caused in my search for happiness and my attempts to escape from reality and duty. I could write for days but I’m sure you get the picture.
The Catalyst
When I was 23 years old everything changed. I had been at a festival with my best friend, which was supposed to be the highlight of our year; and at the time, practically the only thing I looked forward to. We sat round at a friend's house all evening. Everything seemed fine. I didn’t hear from him for a few days and I received a message from a friend saying “Is Mat dead? I panicked, I didn’t know what to do. I called his brother frantically trying to find out what was going on. After several hours I managed to get through and all he said was “Mate. He’s done it”. My legs just went out from beneath me. The world around me disappeared as I went into a black hole of tears and confusion. Mat was one of my best friends, my rock, the foundation of my life. We had done everything together for the past two years. and
Just like that, he was gone.
And the most shameful part was that I didn’t even know he was in a bad place because I was a drugged up mess.
Something had to Change.
With the aid of a good friend I got a working holiday visa for Australia and got myself out of there. This is the first time I’d been off the drug I was addicted to in 6 years. I still remember arriving, my mind was eating me alive, relentlessly pining after that which is desired. I tried to calm this by drinking alcohol, which I did every day for a month, attempting and numb the frustration. It didn’t work! Fortunately I got kicked out of the hostel I was staying in for idiotic behaviour which set me on my journey towards being a grown up.
Responsibility
I had never realised that I had always been running from responsibility. My family are hard working and reasonably successful in the material sense. I had always had a severe aversion to hard work. A German man let me sleep in his workshop where he taught me how to build campervans and became somewhat skilled in various trades. I travelled around Australia in a bus hanging out in some of the most beautiful locations I’ve ever seen, I engaged in activities envied by most and I was in paradise. At least that’s what it probably looked like on Facebook. Not only this, I spent time travelling in New Zealand and doing snowboard seasons in Austria; but one thing was common throughout. I was followed by unhappiness and crippling anxiety that caused me, on two occasions, to have mental breakdowns where for approximately 3 months I was not able to work. I spent my time staring into thin air, crawling in my skin and generally feeling short tempered, frustrated, empty and totally unsatisfied.
Up to this point I have merely been painting a picture of the fact that:
A - My life was an absolute nightmare
B - I am an idiot
C - I tried absolutely everything that I could possibly think of
In New Zealand I had ticked every box that was reasonable to attain happiness. I tried what my parents and society would suggest.
To list a few of the ways I tried to find happiness the 'normal way' in New Zealand:
What can you want except more of these things?
In my opinion I’d tried everything that was reasonable and was aware from that point that no matter what combination of stuff I had it was never going to deliver the goods.
I was not in a good way - My hopes of ever being happy, peaceful and content were fading and I was sliding into a dark and nihilistic place.
Everything changed
One day my housemate asked “Would like to go to a free yoga and meditation retreat?”. This is something that I inherently knew would be good for me but had always seemed like it might be hard work. At this stage I was beyond desperate so I jumped at the opportunity.
We travelled to a beautiful seaside town on the Coromandel called Whangamatā.
The retreat was taking place for 4 days over a long weekend. It consisted of various different elements.
The first and most familiar was:
Yoga
I had briefly had a go at yoga a couple of times so this was easy to get into. There were a variety of different styles including Yin and Vinyasa. Yin is a restorative practice that really allows your nervous system to take a break and for the fascia to release throughout your whole body. The Vinyasa classes are a stronger practise that builds physical and mental strength as well as flexibility. The difference is that unlike conventional exercise there is a fundamental focus on breath, which brings you into your body, it stills the mind and moves the Prana or life air around the body and brings all round balance. Classes are usually finished with Yoga Nidra which is also known as yogic sleep. It is a meditation and conscious relaxation practice that is intended to induce total physical, mental, and emotional relaxation. I’ve heard that an hour of Yoga Nidra can be as restorative as four hours of regular sleep. It has a profound effect that left me in a state of relaxation that was seldom experienced since using drugs.
Kirtan Meditation
I have to be honest, when I was first confronted with this I was a little bit freaked out. Not because it was that unusual but because it didn’t fit in with my conception of what I deemed to be cool at the time “ha”. I walked in and everyone was singing and it reminded me of church or singing at school in assembly which I had never participated in. I don’t know what you’ve heard about meditation but isn’t everyone supposed to be sat in silence? Well not today. I was handed the mantras and it sounded nice but all I could think was “What if your mates see you doing this?”, which is hilarious bearing in mind they are on the other side of the world. You see all these years later worry about belonging to this group despite it nearly killing me many times over. After a couple of hours I started to sing a bit quietly, then with a punk style voice to try and justify it being a bit cool in my mind. It wasn’t until a couple of days in until that I just surrendered and went for it. “Gopala Govinda Rama Modana Mohana” I sang. In that moment I felt as though the false ego that had been suffocating me cracked and released me, allowing me to take the first breath of fresh air in as long as I could remember. This was a real life changing moment for me. It was hard to appreciate the power of transcendental sound at that time. We were told that the nature of material energy is that it starts out sweet but is evanescent and ephemeral, quickly fading leading to inevitable suffering. I can testify to this. However what I could not appreciate at the time is that the nature of spiritual energy is such that it may appear very subtle and mild in the beginning just gets sweeter and sweeter over time and can be an infinite source of spiritual happiness.
Japa Meditation
Japa is much like the kirtan but instead of doing it in a group it is an individual practise that is performed on Mala beads, holding the beads between your thumb and third finger, and for each bead you repeat one of the transcendental mantras and then proceed to the next going around the whole set. I took this for granted for the first year or so of being introduced to this practice. I did not bother with this much, but once I started to implement this to my life daily it completely transformed before my eyes. I found will power and self-control in areas that I never had before and noticed a shift in my personality becoming more compassionate, patient, and gentle to name a few.
When you have tried everything you can think of to solve your problems you are incredibly desperate and feel utterly hopeless. You don’t for a moment imagine that singing some mantras is going to do anything. Especially meditation where you don’t have to gruellingly force yourself to sit still for days on end whilst starving yourself in a cave. Even if it is only your first time you can have a profoundly nice time. When you add this practise to your life daily you can’t even imagine the benedictions that can be bestowed upon you.
If I look at my life in increments over the past few years since taking this more seriously my life has completely transformed. My attraction for material things has diminished 10 fold, leaving me with a much more peaceful state of mind. Not only that I have found great purpose in my life. Because of this shift I was able to quit drugs for good and I started a not for profit organisation to help other addicts and people suffering from mental health problems. I was not previously a charitable person. The past year of my life especially has been full of joy and gratitude. My attraction for that which is spiritual continues to grow and with it comes an incredibly supportive and kind community to whom I feel eternally indebted.
Some days I have to pinch myself
Yoga Wisdom
There is an infinitive ocean of information and too many points to talk about here but I will pick out a few that changed my life:
