Letter from a Senior Devil

I have found that meditation does exactly what it says on the tin. But, for me at least, it has taken a long time to get there.

I was chatting to a friend the other day. Like me, his life has been plagued by melancholy, and he describes the condition so well, in terms so very familiar to me.

Even in the midst of great beauty and in the arms of his lovely family, he is struck by anhedonia. I mentioned to him that his older sister had asked my views on meditation when she was 11 years old. We were walking on Hampstead Heath and I was much taken aback by her impressive precocity. That was over 30 years ago and I am still amazed when I recall her earnest young face and her serious demeanour. And now her younger brother looks also to take up the practice.

How very familiar my friend’s problem sounds: I travelled the world, I lived my entire life surrounded by beauty and yet I was never able to appreciate it. Bobbing around in Hong Kong harbour on the way to lunch on Lamma, exploring the glory of Tokyo and the Japanese Alps, balancing on my snowboard above Davos – the blackness never entirely left me, and never in any event for long.

I have written much over the past few years on my battles with the daemon and at first it was an attempt to puzzle it out for my own purposes. To see my way out of the deep, deep dark of my embattled soul.

Without any shadow of doubt, I have now learnt to control the dark, to mitigate it, to destroy its hold over me.  My friend has come to the conclusion that meditation is his best chance – his great hope. And my fervent desire is that it works for him – I have no doubt that it will. But I feel a great responsibility for him, and also towards any others who may have read my words and found in them a measure of encouragement.  I wanted to clarify and expand a little on my struggles – to point out a few of the traps I have stumbled into.  And at last escaped from.

Above all I want to expand on something I touched on a few months back – holism, the necessity to alter one’s entire life and one’s entire outlook on life. Not just intellectually but actually – in day to day practice.

I have always been a quiet sort of fellow at heart, contemplative, given to liturgy and choral music, the trappings of spirituality of all sorts. So probably my first mistake was to end up as an investment banker.

In those days my journey into my own psyche had only just begun. I was deeply dissatisfied with a life which, on its surface, most would take to have been glittering and successful.

I started with the Bible, I seem to recall. And Peake’s commentary.  Surely I had done something wrong, I must have sinned greatly. The answer to my misery, the way out, must reside in those dusty old pages written by a bunch of tribesmen and desert nomads thousands of years ago.

I found no solace there, no answers. And a great deal of cruelty and misery as well as, admittedly, some beauty of language and thought.

I worked my way through modern psychology, starting with Mesmer and Charcot then Freud and others. Hypnotism fascinated me and has remained a great interest. Much of psychology in general I found profoundly unhelpful, but then I guess I was looking for a silver bullet.

And there, I believe, was my ultimate error. The search for a silver bullet. A one stop solution for my condition, a simple and above all quick escape from trauma and misery. Not for me the endless therapy of talk. Not for me the unfulfilled promises of the religion of my upbringing which assured me I was sinful, as was everyone around me. And that some pie in the sky fellow  would fix it all for me if only I would repent and agree that he (or she or it) was the Dogs Bollox.

I turned east and felt I had arrived in fertile territory at last. Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto.

I was deeply puzzled by the canon, the law of the east, much as I had been by that of the west. The same beliefs in gods and demons, flying carpets and impossible miracles. Even in those early days, I leaned towards secular Buddhism and dispensed with supernatural faery tales.

I was taxed, for quite a time, by the concept of nirvana. What exactly was it and how did you bring it on? Time wasted I fear – the evident truth was much more prosaic but nonetheless deeply useful.

I took on meditation right from the very beginning of my search all those years ago.  I practiced on ski lifts (I spent most of my career dealing in financial instruments from my snowboard in the mountains above Klosters), on trains, on my frequent flights here, there and everywhere.

I didn’t really know what I was looking for, how I should feel, what my practice was supposed to achieve, and above all when. I had some peace in the mountains and quite a bit of fun, but the clouds never truly lifted and the sun never shone for very long.

Looking back I was living an illusion. I had read all the advertising and the hype (including translations of original texts and some mostly awful modern interpretations). I was captivated by the concepts and certainly convinced by the moral aspects of the teachings. But somehow my approach was clearly too intellectual and remote.  The reality, looking back, was that I understood it all but never really lived it.

And my meditation came and went, in fits and starts – I was never very clear or very sure what it had achieved or hadn’t.

At the same time, and over many years, I endlessly explored physical remedies. I moved countries, jobs and apartments frequently. From Tokyo to Kong Kong, from Singapore back to London and then to Switzerland. And within Switzerland from Zurich to Zug, then Villars and finally Klosters. Via a house in Le Touquet which I kept at the same time for good measure.

And then the pills and countless other doomed projects – St John’s Wort, Omega 3 oil, CBD oil, magic mushrooms.

I returned to meditation in a more serious way some 3 or 4 years ago but by that time I had managed to achieve a little wisdom.  By then I was too jaded to continue the useless search for a quick fix. I realised that leaving aside a lobotomy or the adoption of The Final Solution, I had to fix myself by developing what I rather grandiloquently call a world view – and by living it. And it helped, greatly. If there is one thing I can thank the psilocybin for, it was in helping me to think in a different way, changing my mind, even if, in the end, it nearly did for me.

And so back to holism.  A term I have tended to deride in the past but I cannot think of a better way of putting it.  After so many years of fruitless searching, I suddenly began to sense that there were so many aspects of my own behaviour which had caused me untold damage over the years.  And so I began turning my internal life upside down.  Since no rearrangement of my external circumstances had ever made any difference.

In physical terms I ensure that I eat healthily and relatively sparsely, exercise rigorously and get plenty of sleep. I don’t touch alcohol or cigarettes (I gave both up many years ago). I read, play the piano, and occasionally sing. And I listen to myself (and occasionally my wife) very, very carefully.

Importantly I realised that I knew enough. That it was pointless to continue to believe that anyone else had any better answers, let alone The Answer.  And so I abandoned  much of what I had agonised about over many decades. Religion, philosophy, science – to hell with Sartre and Sisyphus, Camus and god himself.

But I did see that I had picked up kernels of truth from all over the place over very many years, and that perhaps the time had come to practice seriously. Rather than read or write or pontificate.

I began to meditate in a way that I had never done before.  Seeking nothing, but letting whatever was out there (or in there) come to me. And letting it seep through every aspect of my life. I have pursued meditation every single day since then, for an hour or two, followed by meditative exercise and yoga.

What came through most clearly was the destructiveness of my own thoughts and their relentless, dull repetitiveness. And slowly, very slowly, over the past few years I have been able to change my thoughts and drop the damaging, obsessive worrying and the clinging to hopeless desires and ambitions.

What also began to emerge was empathy and the realisation that life was far from simple for any of us. Much of the moral guidance of the hoary old tomes I had read  now assumed far greater importance. Difficult to understand quite how or why, but I seemed more able to concentrate less on my own useless obsessions and think more about what was going on around me, and to others.

And so my days became different and my behaviour less obsessive (or autistic?).  I spent far less time at my computer – I realised the huge daily mental effort was a major cause of my blackness. What had once seemed cardinal became far less so. Yes, I would continue to trade for the intellectual challenge, but I would no longer let acquisition and the desire for more ruin my life.

I learnt to use a dimmer switch when I sensed I was overdoing it. I can be overwhelmed by things many people take in their stride. Too many people, too much conversation. Too much thinking. Too much Netflix, too much anything.  I had to learn to moderate my life, every aspect of it. I had to realise that I was not who I thought I was, not who or what I would like to be.

And I have tried to be better behaved, kinder, more thoughtful – a daily struggle and not always successful but certainly worth the effort for my own happiness and for those around me.

So perhaps awareness has been my biggest takeaway from my endless (and perhaps excessive?) meditation. That I was ruining my own life, quite unnecessarily, and that much of what I had considered important in the past wasn’t. And could be abandoned for a better way of life.

And yes, there have been surprising physical and mental benefits to my practice. A satori or three here and there. Some “visions” not unlike those produced by psychedelics. And peace, real peace which often lasts throughout the day (but which flees rapidly if I forget to use my dimmer switch).

And so to a younger sufferer I would say stand back. Go inwards, see what you are all about. Be quiet, be still. Listen – to yourself, the wind, the birds, the very universe itself. And let go – above all else let go. A journey inward paradoxically becomes in the end a journey outward. A realisation that we are all part of a whole and that perhaps the whole matters more than the parts. That perhaps we individually are not so very important and should let go of our small vanities and concerns.

I hope that my words may help. I hope that I make some sense and that the tales of my own struggles may be of some use to my young friend. And to any others who may read of my efforts.

I no longer find myself asking what the universe is about or how I fix it.  I exist, I am and with that I seem to find myself content.