Appendix (4): Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression

Good Mood

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Good Mood:
The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Chapter 15

cont.

What Meditation Does

Exactly what happens to a person while meditating is beyond general description, and varies from person to person. We can say, however, that in meditation of all sorts one does not think in normal Western everyday ways. Perhaps the basic difference is that one ceases to make comparisons between one's actual and benchmark- hypothetical situations. In this manner, the source of sadness is removed during meditation. Another difference is that one ceases to strive but relaxes instead, which leads to pleasant physical sensations incompatible with sadness. Furthermore, meditation often leads to a radically altered perspective, for example a cosmic rather than an individual perspective. Within such a cosmic perspective the contemporary events which are the grist for the mill of self-comparisons appear insignificant and unworthy of attention; this works against making negative self-comparisons.

The mechanism that leads to the state of meditation is a shift from the active flight-or-fight survival mode of thought in which one classifies and evaluates and makes comparisons, to the passive experiential state in which one simply takes in sensory experiences without classifying or evaluating or comparing them (see page 000 above). In the striving mode one abstracts a limited set of elements from the sensory input, using various already-established intellectual patterns; these abstracted inputs are the materials which one compares, and which may lead to negative self-comparisons. In contrast, in meditation one makes oneself aware either of all stimuli or of just a single element. The latter is the "one-pointed mind" of Zen in which, even outside of meditation proper, the person is aware - but fully aware - of the sensory experience, and is not "intellectualizing." When I eat I eat, and when I sit I just sit, Zen Buddhists say.

That is, when one meditates, one's mind and body are mostly off duty; they no longer are serving as watchers and laborers in keeping one alive in a biological and social sense; rather, one's body and mind relax as they surrender these tasks. The same kind of effects, though much milder in intensity, occur when a worker relaxes on a coffee break, or when a student leaves off reading a hard text and dreamily looks out the window, or when in the woods one's attention is absorbed by nature. Religious services often produce the same sorts of feelings with prayers, music, and beauty of setting; they take one out of the world of striving and surviving, into the world of sensing and absorbing. Sabbath observers put themselves "off duty" for an entire day (at least those religious groups for whom the Sabbath is not a stern ascetic day).

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Sometimes people worry that ceasing to make comparisons implies quietism and leaving ordinary life. Indeed, some depressives avoid the pain of neg-comps by giving up their fundamental goals, which leads them into apathy. But this is an unlikely occurrence in the present context of discussion.

During periods of relaxation from striving -- whether very deeply with meditation, or less deeply in religious services or absorption in nature - the force that makes for sadness and depression is absent: One does not make comparisons - and especially negative self-comparisons - when one is in an experiential mode rather than in a survival mode.

Even non-theistic people sometimes arrive at the thought of God when meditating, because their experience transcends everyday concepts. For example, for me the knowledge that in meditation I can relax into the cessation of mental pain and the existence of physical pleasure is so wonderful, and the state itself is so awesome, that sometimes I refer to this inner refuge as "God," though I am quite without belief in the usual Judaic-Christian concept of an active God. (More about the word "God" below.)

Meditation also has links to the making of art. In creative moments the painter or composer or poet tends to suspend willful direction of the mind, letting thoughts drift as if they have lives of their own. But the artist continues to maintain a general supervisory control over the thoughts - like the director of a play who is out of sight in the wings, but who is nevertheless keeping a watchful eye on the stage. The artist's trick is to exert that supervisory control without worrying about it, to be thinking freely without striving for that freedom. In the most successful moments the artist often feels as if the work gets done by itself, without effort by the artist - just as a skilled athlete sometimes comes to feel that the game is played effortlessly, without any feeling of "trying" to play well. Athletes call this feeling "being in the zone". This is commonly experienced as a moment of pure joy.

There is an apparent logical contradiction between the artist letting the mind be totally free, and supervising the mind at the same time. This pair of apparent opposites is "equivalent to the Buddha's enjoining his disciples to stop desiring, which would of course put them in a state of desiring not to desire."19 But "freedom and "desire" are complex multi-layered words, and in fact there need be no psychological contradiction in these matters.

There is a crucial difference between on the one hand, meditation, and on the other hand, habit-formation and count-your- blessings exercises to combat depression, though they may seem similar in some respects. Meditation seems to produce increased energy in some people, whereas counting your blessings and such habit-formation devices as behavior-modification therapy seem to use up energy in the exertion of "will power" to alter one's behavior. When meditating, you husband energy because you are not "trying" to do anything. It is a state in which you feel no "ought," ; you purposely "let it all hang out" (really, hang in). This unusual cessation of activity for all your striving and physical mental faculties produces a sense of deep restedness afterward.

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