Sit,
Stay,
Heal.
How Meditation Changed My Mind,
Grew My Heart,
And Saved My Ass.
Written and Read by Spike Gillespie.
That's me.
Preface.
January 2015.
Hello,
Welcome,
And thank you for being here.
The stories I am about to tell you are true.
The need for preface isn't really much,
Except that I am a lifetime over explainer,
So please indulge me for just a moment here.
In December 2012 I lost my shit.
I mean I really,
Truly freaked out.
Not the first time in my life.
Beginning around adolescence I started suffering from cyclical bouts of intense depression.
Back then that word wasn't bandied about the way it is now.
It certainly wasn't mentioned in the home in which I grew up.
Nor was anxiety,
Or self-medication,
Or alcoholism.
Certainly not PTSD.
But I know now that I am older and have been through a lot of therapy,
And because we live in a society with a growing body of research explaining these things,
That for the vast majority of my life I suffered from all of these ailments of body and mind.
A friend once said to me,
Wow,
You have everything,
Which I actually thought was pretty funny.
I guess I do kind of have everything.
But really,
All of the every things are intertwined.
Although I can't make an accurate diagram indicating how much of my mind has been eaten up by the anxiety versus the depression,
The PTSD versus the addiction issues,
I can say that all of them are interrelated,
And that they had a hell of a party inside my mind egging each other on,
Double-daring each other to see which would be the one to finally take me down.
While I hope that I have not too much used these labels as crutches or excuses,
There is little doubt that at times I have.
These days though,
When I am contemplating the various demons that have stomped around in my mind for so very long,
I only ever reach for a label as a tool to help me continue working to heal my mind,
Ease my suffering.
Recognizing that I have X traits and that these traits fall under the umbrella of,
Say,
PTSD,
I can,
When symptoms flare,
Look at what therapies exist to help alleviate them.
I am all about the healing now,
Genuine healing I mean.
I used to try to find the cure in the bottle,
And that worked really well for me.
Just about every night I would throw back a bunch of booze and somewhere in between the third and fourth drink I would find this beautiful mental sweet spot where the anxiety would melt away.
I could be still,
And the pains past and present that had been screaming at me would mercifully hush.
This felt so good,
And it lasted for a solid twenty minutes.
Then,
Pretty quickly,
I'd be drunk,
Then hung over the next day.
Hangovers are feasts for mental demons,
And they'd all rush to the table and devour me some more,
Amplifying the voices of self-doubt,
Self-hatred,
Fear,
Worry,
And all of the other ninety billion variations of darkness I could conjure.
Eventually,
Thankfully,
I put down the bottle.
That was a good start,
Definitely on the list of things to do to quiet the voices.
But getting sober was not,
It turned out,
Enough to keep me from succumbing to ongoing stretches of depression,
Which still swept over me unbidden and left me reeling.
Not as often,
And perhaps not usually as bad,
But the thing about depression is when you're in it,
You're in it,
And you are so down you hardly have the time or interest to console yourself with the thought,
Say,
I feel only eighty-seven percent like utter hell instead of a hundred percent the way I used to feel when I was depressed and drunk.
In December 2012,
Though,
I can say with authority,
Because unfortunately I had a ringside seat,
That my mind went haywire.
Really short-circuited.
There was some good news.
Despite the feeling that dying seemed like it would be far less complicated than living,
I understood I did not want to kill myself or relapse and drown my pain in alcohol.
Best of all,
I understood that despite being so exhausted I could barely summon the energy to take a leak,
I absolutely had to investigate the cure.
Not a short-term fix,
But a real,
True,
Once-and-for-all healing of my mind.
I'd flirted with antidepressants several times in the nineties to no avail.
Exercise helped,
Eating right helped,
But then when I'm depressed,
Eating is practically out of the question.
I did know about meditation,
And in fact have been meditating off and on for a dozen years already.
But now I wanted to see if I could commit to a serious daily practice in the hopes of banishing the depression forever.
A tall order,
Yes,
But I was so sick of being felled regularly by my own mind.
Also,
A growing body of neuroscientific studies was quantifying astonishing results experienced by meditators.
Not that I actually in my condition gave a rat's ass about exploring these studies in depth,
But let's just say the buzz was out there picking up steam.
Meditate.
It's damn good for you.
What follows is the tale of my adventure in applying mindful breathing to my life in a very dedicated way.
I'm going to tell you right now.
Meditation worked.
I don't mean I feel a little better.
I mean it has now been two solid years since I have fallen into depression.
Well,
I must give some credit to other factors,
Getting older,
Intense work with a great therapist,
Friends who have held me so close over the years,
Even and especially at my lowest points and darkest moments.
Meditation has been a key component in my recovery from nearly four decades of this cyclical anguish.
I still have very hard days.
I still freak out internally sometimes,
But I no longer lose my shit,
Not like the old days.
When issues come up,
Real or imagined,
Or a combination of both,
Meditation provides an awareness that helps me sort through it all,
Stay steady on,
And understand deeply what is going on.
In turn,
This understanding quiets the anxiety and helps me see clearly.
The attendant calm sharpens my focus so I can zoom in on my suffering,
Recognize my own role in that suffering,
And consequently send suffering packing.
You know those magic eight balls that you ask a question and then shake and a white triangle appears in the blue liquid and offers variations of yes,
No,
And unclear?
Pretend your mind is the eight ball.
Now,
Pretend your question has to deal with something truly getting to you.
Personal failures,
Relationship problems,
Guilt,
Regret,
Addiction.
Meditation is like shaking the eight ball,
Except completely different because,
Yeah,
You're being very still,
And once you've practiced for a while,
Always getting a clear answer,
Never getting some vague suggestion to ask again later.
It is my hope that if you are suffering from big,
Hurting mind,
That my story will encourage you to try sitting and breathing just to see where it takes you.
Or,
Even if you aren't battling the sorts of mental ailments I battled for so long,
I promise you you will also benefit tremendously from meditation because all of us can use clear answers to live better.
This book is laid out in alternating sections.
There are chapters interspersed with lessons.
The chapters tell the linear story of my journey from December 2012 through December 2013.
The lessons explain how my meditation practice works.
I am a guru-free non-traditionalist.
While I do embrace Buddhist philosophy and use basic tenets of this philosophy to inform the way I live my now and to help explain my practice,
Please know that it is not my intent to proselytize in any way.
Anyone can breathe.
Everyone must.
And pretty much all of us have butts.
So there you go.
You already sit and breathe every day.
Here are some thoughts on how taking that to the next level,
Dedicating 20 minutes daily to mindfully doing these very things you are already doing mindlessly,
Can help keep you from losing your shit too.
There is one other thing I need to tell you before you dive in.
Two very good friends of mine,
Jill and Christopher,
Kindly served as first readers.
They concur,
And I cannot deny that the first part of this journey is indeed very dark to the point of being potentially off-putting.
Many people know me as a wise ass,
A jokester,
And one who laughs often.
Those are all true parts of me.
I don't always display outwardly the darkness when it comes for me.
So the stories you are about to read may come as a surprise,
And at least some of them are going to bum the crap out of you.
I ask that you bear with the tale.
Consider this not my greetings from Asbury Park,
But rather my darkness on the edge of town.
And if you need a little something to lift your spirits and get you through the hard parts,
Here is a story to help you toward that end.
In mid-December 2013,
As I was nearing one full year of meditating with serious intent every single day,
I was invited to participate in a fundraising event called 60 and 60 to support Fusebuck Festival,
This annual internationally renowned fringe theater extravaganza in Austin,
Headed up by my friend Ron Berry.
The way it works is that 60 performers each get one minute to deliver a performance.
When I participated in 2012,
I brought my Boston Terrier rebound,
Held her in my arms,
And sang You Are My Sunshine to her in front of a packed house.
I called the piece Empty Nest Syndrome.
To my surprise and delight,
The hundreds of people gathered in the room joined me,
And what I had intended to be a minute of silliness turned into 60 seconds of deeply touching community collaboration.
I figured I'd do a rebound redo in 2013,
Dress her in her Marilyn Monroe costume,
And have everyone sing Happy Birthday Mr.
President.
Then I got word that due to new regulations no dogs were allowed.
So I decided what the hell I'd just use my 60 seconds to meditate.
Lucky for me,
The guy who went on immediately prior thought it would be a brilliant idea to stand up and sing a song about a dream of singing in front of people naked,
Which yes,
He sang naked.
I stepped up to the mic and asked the room,
Still recoiling and trying to unsee my predecessor,
To please join me in a full minute of meditation.
I then dropped my cushion,
Got into half-lotus,
And as quickly as possible wheeled myself into mindful breathing.
Not easy in a room alone,
Much harder in a loud crowded bar with hundreds watching me and chattering about the man before me.
As I had been surprised the year before,
Now I was surprised again.
The entire room fell into an immediate dead silence.
Everyone breathed with me.
I could hear my heart bashing against my ribs.
I kept breathing.
They kept breathing.
It was a very long minute,
But a very good one.
As with my rebound song,
I thought I was presenting this piece as a bit of a lark.
But there I had this solid proof of how my year of meditating with intent had paid off.
I could still myself in that crazy noisy space.
Every single voice quieted in an instant.
This metaphor is almost too easy,
But I'll take it.
My whole life there was a crowd of voices in my mind.
Sometimes they still show up.
Always I sit down on my cushion.
I breathe.
The voices stop.
The silence is beautiful.
Thank you so much.
I'm so grateful you're here.
