The Power of Pause

A Moment of Liberation from the World

Few here know of my spiritual practice, either through the martial arts or art, which I use to complement and check my scientific work.  The cosmic humility and human compassion these allow, perhaps counterintuitively, make for better science.

Since the New Year, I have been reading the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha, which is said to be one of the most direct experiences of Truth.  Phenomenology is what I have enjoyed as a psychiatrist, an anthropologist, and a meditator.  I like to test and “attune” to Reality myself.  Here is a passage from my readings:

both work and knowledge together lead to the supreme goal of liberation.  Neither work alone nor knowledge alone can lead to liberation….  He is qualified to study this scripture who feels: “I am bound, I should be liberated,” who is neither totally ignorant nor enlightened.

A member of the public wrote me the following, which I appreciated, and which prompted me to write this Newsletter:

After subscribing to your Substack, reading some of your essays, and watching a few of your videos, I want to offer [sympathy as] someone who may be familiar with a little of what you’re going through.

[I] am sorry for the abuse and pain you’ve been suffering.  You’re suffering for the world—and because of the world—and I want you to know you’re not alone.  The psychiatric profession reminds me a little of the Republican party in that both are overwhelmed by phenomena freezing them in fear they don’t understand or know how to handle.  It’s humorous in a way—mental health experts caught flat footed by a mental health crisis it’s not able to manage.  Of course, it’s not humorous; it’s tragic.

You’ve been set up as an example for people to lower their eyes before and avoid.  You’re exiled in a way that reminds me of how Solzhenitsyn writes about how being in prison can be a gift.  You’re not in a prison.  The institutions you love have put themselves in prisons as they betray themselves, forcing you to watch almost helplessly the people you love and have committed to serve, suffer.  You’re watching a tidal wave of darkness overwhelm education, ethics, science, and medicine—all of which you’ve dedicated your life to help.

Obviously, I don’t know you, but these thoughts pass through me as I read “Preventing World War III” and watch your interviews.  Seeing your face reminds me of what we feel in the spiritual dark nights when we watch one light after another go out around and within us.

I don’t know your spiritual foundation, but you have one, and whatever it may be there is a way through the nights you face.  There will come a time when your suffering will strengthen what you don’t even know about yourself, so you are able to help others when the world is in fragments and people call for your help, help which you couldn’t have given 10 years ago, but will somehow have depths of compassion and insight desperately needed.

All endings are beginnings.  Yes, the world is mentally ill, but this is nothing new.  It’s just we’ve entered an acute phase that is more apparent and startles us.  Nothing happening today has not happened countless times before, but we thought we were better than this, didn’t we?

We are better than this, but it’s not us that is better, but what is inside us all we love.  What I like most about your work is how you say health is life-affirming.  That’s so beautiful.  Thank you, for your work.

Surely, I mourn—as many do—the vibrant democracy the U.S. had been, but my mind has never not been in exile.  I believe this holds true for anybody who looks inward and finds that, no matter what, the world is still far from our full potential.  I hope that I can be an example someday, to show how liberating our minds does not just allow us to tolerate dark times but is actually the key to bringing the world out of darkness!

My audience has heard repeatedly—and I will continue to repeat until the American Psychiatric Association either realizes its errors or is held to account—that the deadly Covid pandemic, the mental health pandemic behind it, Trump Contagion, and the nation’s Death Spiral all never had to be.  The psychiatric field was not only “caught flat footed” but needlessly caused a mental health crisis by denying what we could do!  It refused simple education, unable to liberate itself from its concerns over funding and its corruption, when all it needed was to relax, to follow simple science and pure ethics.  None of this was complicated.  Instead, all the artifice of contortions and distortions has perverted and imperiled the institution, and the bonanza of profit under the Trump administration cannot negate the fact that psychiatry itself may soon become irrelevant.

Therefore, an “exile” is indeed a gift, not as a source of sorrow but a return to one’s Source, which I have called grounding in Truth in Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul. One might also describe it as liberation from unreality.  Here is another verse from the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha­:

Neither freedom from sorrow nor realization of one’s real nature is possible as long as the conviction does not arise in one that the world-appearance is unreal.

One must heal oneself to heal the world; this can also mean that one must liberate oneself to liberate the world in turn.  In Profile of a Nation, I emphasize the need first to tune into oneself and to get enough sleep, eat healthy meals, connect with friends and family, and limit fixation on the news.  We are much more than the world. Balance, personal time, and distance are powerful tools for regaining this perspective, so that one does not become anxious or greedy or too attached, which helps one to know when not to act—since most of our destructiveness is self-generated.  There is true power in this, for from this place, one will also know when to act.  This applies to the fighting sports: “Technique before strength, and spirit before technique,” we used to say. This is what my painting practice has taught me: it is through the spaces, not the objects, that a picture comes to life.  This is the shortcut and the secret to true product.  Taking a pause, therefore, should not be underestimated: it is the key to invincibility and creativity in the world!