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Being bipolar without disorder.

by Tom Wootton

How I Found Ecstasy In Depression

Depression can help us to find beauty in every moment.
Published on July 30, 2012 by Tom Wootton in Bipolar Advantage

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I have been meditating for over 50 years. I started when I was

five years old when I became fascinated with watching my
breath go in and out. I intuitively knew that this and other
meditative practices would bring me to a state of ecstasy. It
didn't take long before pursuing that state became the most
important thing in my life.
Although I got incredibly close through my efforts in meditation,
it wasn't until I looked for ecstasy in depression that I truly
found it. Once I found ecstasy in depression I found it
everywhere. My hope is that sharing my experience might help
others to find the same insights that I have.

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As I watched my breath go in and out I found some dramatic changes in

my state of consciousness. I would detach from my body and find myself
floating above and looking down at myself sitting there. It was a very
pleasurable state, but also very profound in how I viewed the world. I
believed that part of me was untouched by the physical world; the part
that I now call my soul.
It wasn't long before my soul separations started encroaching on my
waking states. I would often find myself turning the corner and suddenly
being in a long tunnel with a light at the end of it. During those
experiences time would stand still or at least slow down dramatically. I
interpreted these experiences as seeing God.
By the time I was in my teens I knew that there were others who had
experienced some of the same things. They called such moments
ecstasy, bliss, Nirvana, Samadhi, superconsciousness, equanimity,
"oneness with God," and many other names. Although I recognized that
there are many ways to reach such states, I started practicing Yoga since
it was the most attractive to me of all of the different approaches to finding
them. I was much less interested in the philosophies than how to
experience ecstasy directly and Yoga offered a path that was geared
toward direct experience.

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In my twenties I realized that there were people who were experiencing

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things far beyond what I had and seemed to have a much deeper
understanding of them than I. I met with as many as I could find and spent
most of my time studying the lives of saints. This search for meaning
dominated my thoughts as my meditation practices deepened.

by Michael Castleman, M.A.

4
By the time I was thirty I was living in a monastery and meditating
anywhere from 8 to 24 hours a day. I had found a community of people
who valued such experiences as much as myself and for the first time I felt
completely at home. We meditated for hours together, but when the
meditation ended I would keep at it because I thought that my next breath
was going to be the one that gave me permanent bliss. By then I was able
to travel down the tunnel and bask in the light at the end for what felt like
a timeless eternity. I appeared to be so good at generating higher states
of consciousness that fellow monks called me "Samadhi Tom."

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Right about the time that I thought I was about to reach the final
realization of permanent ecstasy I fell into an incredibly deep depression
that lasted several months. I had been depressed many times before, but
nothing like this one. I was so debilitated that they had to move me into
the building with the kitchen because I was unable to even walk across
the courtyard to eat. I laid in bed crying all day and couldn't even attend
the meditations or practice in my room.
This was my first truly debilitating depression and it had extreme
consequences. It took away the most important thing in my life. At the time
I thought I had lost everything and life was devoid of all meaning, so I left
the monastery and floundered for several years.
I spent my forties lost in turmoil. I pursued a life of no purpose and
allowed myself to become a person that I really hated. I made a lot of
money, but said that I had rented my soul to the devil while allowing myself
to stray the furthest I ever had from the only thing that really mattered.
The depressions and manias became much more frequent during this
time. When they had gotten to the point that I was completely
nonfunctional, I finally got diagnosed as Depressed and then more
accurately as Bipolar. I saw it as a kind of a death sentence combined
with an explanation for so many of the things that happened throughout
my life. I realized that my first full on manic episode happened when I was
nine years old, for example, and that depression was at least a yearly
occurance.
Because of the diagnosis and the prevalence of delusional thinking being
a part of it, I looked upon all of the experiences of my life as a sign of my
mental illness instead of a sign that I was seeing God. I was devastated by
the implications of it. My next "tunnel" experience left me crying in despair
that I had been so foolish to think that such experiences meant anything
other than that I was crazy.
In deep despair of having no meaningful existence whatsoever, I
attempted suicide. Fortunately, I failed and subsequently set out to find
meaning through my bipolar condition instead of trying to make it go
away. At the time, and even today for most people, the idea is
blasphemous to the paradigm that says it is impossible and one would be
delusional to even try.

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My fifties have been a time of great renewal. It is when my whole life

started to make sense and everything came together. I wrote The
Depression Advantage as an exploration of how others throughout history
had gone through some of the same turmoils and achieved the goal I was
seeking. I wrote chapters about the lives of saints who had experienced at
least parts of my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pains and how
they ultimately found that the goal they sought was actually within those
experiences.
I was especially taken with the story of St. Teresa of Avila. Although she
found her "oneness with God" through her experience of physical pain, I
saw in her experience many insights that applied to my own battles with
depression. For most of her life she assumed that she would not find her
"oneness with God" unless she removed her physical pain, yet eventually
found it in the pain itself.
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Once Teresa found her "oneness with God," she tried to help others to
achieve the same goal. She helped many people through her writings, but
also found it hard to communicate her truth with those who could not
fathom the apparent contradiction in saying pain could be blissful. One of
the things she said in trying to explain it was, "The pain is still there. It
bothers me so little now that I feel my soul is served by it."
I was so moved by this statement that I found myself repeating it over and
over again throughout the day. I found it so compelling that I continued
repeating it no matter what I was outwardly doing. After two months of
repeating Teresa's quote I became very upset with her. I thought, "How
can she say it bothered her so little when she was bedridden by the
pain?" I now smile and think of her when people get upset with what I say.
Yet, motivated by my desire to figure out how she had found permanent
ecstasy and why I had not, I kept repeating the phrase for many more
months. In the meantime, I was experiencing the deepest depression I
ever had. I was bedridden and in extreme pain: physically, mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually. Although I had the tools to make it go away
and was in no danger of another suicide attempt, I allowed it to happen
because I knew that the insight I was seeking was in my depression as it
was in Teresa's physical pain.
It finally dawned on me after about 10 months of repeating the quote and
enduring the pain. When Teresa said, "It bothers me so little... " she didn't
mean her body, but that part of her that I had touched in myself so long
ago - her soul. In that moment I found the ecstasy that I had been seeking
my entire life. This direct experience is completely different than the
intellectual understanding that I had. It is real instead of imagined.
My life changed from that moment on. Like Teresa, I had been avoiding
the very thing that would give me the ecstasy that I was looking for.
Having found ecstasy in my depression, I realized that my failed attempts
in my previous efforts were because I didn't really understand what it truly
meant to be in a state of bliss. I was mistaking the pleasurable feelings of
highs for real equanimity which is beyond the likes and dislikes, pleasures
and pains, or any of the dualities of life.
Now that I found ecstasy, I see it in every moment of my life no matter
what the circumstance or state of mind. I prefer to call it equanimity
instead of the other terms because that better describes it for me: All
states are equally blissful and there is no need to change any of them to
be in permanent equanimity. In equanimity I can see that depression is
part of the bliss just as much as pleasure, happiness, and all other
conditions.
Equanimity is the essence of Yoga as described in the Bhagavad-Gita:
"Be steadfast in yoga, devotee. Perform your duty without attachment,
remaining equal to success or failure. Such equanimity of mind is called
Yoga." (Yogananda, Paramahansa, The Bhagavad Gita, translation, 2003
Self-Realization Fellowship, CA, 2:48)
Although I would never discount the power of meditation as I see what it
did to prepare me for such a state, I realize now that many people pursue
ecstasy thinking that it can only be found in the right conditions. My
experience taught me that unless you can find it in all conditions you are
deluding yourself into thinking that highs are the same thing as
equanimity.
I would have never learned this critical lesson without the help of my
extremely deep depressions. Nor would I have found it without the help of
those who had already found equanimity in their own struggles.

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