I’ve spent the last five days at a most remarkable International Society of Addiction Medicine conference with the greatest speakers from around the world. I learned so much and was present for the celebration of the founder, Dr. Nady el Guebaly. I had the pleasure of meeting him in youth and hearing his wisdom. Everything he told me then was true though it would take years to fully appreciate the genius of his early insights. I look back now and have had the benefit of two mentors who received and well deserved, the Order of Canada, Dr. Nady el Guebaly in Psychiatry and Dr. Jack Hildes in Community Medicine.
In the late 1980’s, I was in Bombay for a couple of months, rewarding myself with a trip there after I’d completed my psychiatry residency.I’d begun a dual speciality in Community Medicine and Psychiatry and only completed 2 years of Community Medicine and Public Health. The irony is I did a year of Surgical residency before doing family practice, rural medicine and returning to specialize in Psychiatry. My life path wasn’t a straight line. Being here after 30 plus years of life and medicalpractice I’ve found myself reflecting on this particularjourney I’ve taken.
Were I to do it again I’d be more respectful of my parents whose love and wisdom have only become known with time and comparison. When we are young we think others are experiencing what we are and now I know the depth of my mother’s love and concern and the genius , love and discipline of my father. My brother was such a good man, so dutiful, fun and willing to sacrifice so much for the love of family. I took family for granted too much. I was so young when I thought I was so old.
I wished I’d been more kind to my former partners. I now know that I thought others should change but nothing like 25 days sailing solo through winter storms in the north Pacific brings home the problem was me and not them. I wish I’d been more loving but mostly more kind, less harsh with my words, less judgemental and more forgiving. They are and were such beautiful people and I was so immature.
I laughed sharing with someone here how proud I was to be an ‘intellectual’ as a young academic. Apparently I had a very high IQ but while that aided me in getting A’s in almost all my examinations it was in the area of emotional IQ I needed development. India is a motherland. I grew up in a patriarchal culture. Feminism is in Canada just an abortive strain of patriarchy with tails wanting to be heads, a tom boy mockery. My Buddhist professor friend, Aim, now a mother, loves International Feminism and knows it to be a movement of mothers and women and family and not just angry adolescents imitating men.
The low testosterone in the west reflects the decline of real patriarchy in the same way for playboy adolescent men rather than the mature men my father and brother were. India is a land of family and all the men I speak to include their wives and children and mothers and father’s in their discussion.
In the west, the east was viewed as a spiritual monastic destination. The Buddha with eyes turned inward appealled to the increasing alienation of youth whereas the eyes of the Hindu statues always were open and looking out to family and society. Trungpa, the great Buddhist leader said the west had trouble with spirituality because of their ‘monkey minds’ only being able to experience ‘spiritual consumerism’.
At a 12 step meeting here I heard again the message that ‘god works through people’. Addiction is alienation and recovery is participation. Creativity and positivity join us with our friends and family, destruction and negativity separate us. In my work I’m so commonly with young adults experiencing nihilism , young men living in the basements of their parents home addicted to screens, and unable to move out to caring for others. The journey Anna Freud described from Narcissism to Altruism is stymied in our society.
I’m always feeling like I’m a much younger person looking out of the eyes of this older person with thinning hair, wrinkles, back and joint aches.
I see less ageism here. I love the veneration of the elders in the east, the essence of spirituality, the humility and service. I loved watching the brilliant young doctors I met here deferring to old farts like me and being gentle with the aging leaders from their universities and communities.
I love the cows. A taxi driver confirmed that in the cycle of reincarnation that any cow could be a grandparents choosing this as the last step before enlightenment. The Chinese have long said they’d like to be reincarnated as a privileged american pet. Here the cow is venerated as the elder and our tour guide, a Jain, told us that increasingly they are finding new medicines to improve immunology from, of all things, cow piss. Personally I love the Lassie yoghurt drinks here and the yoghurt itself is the best I’ve ever tasted.
In the Bible in John, it says ‘in the beginning was the word’. String Theory says that the world is an vibrating musical reality. It’s a symphony and I’ve always thought I was the Kazoo. There’s a need for every instrument and with the greatest of conductors we’ve heard chainsaw and Harley motor sounds incorporated into magical symphonies of sound. Metal and flute and violin have all coupled with the rhythm section. Here the tabla and sitar sound so beautiful together. I listened to the Sharma’s, a protege boy and girl, that played for the ISAM gala and was reminded of all the years I listened to Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar. Last night we listened to uptown Jazz at our hotel, this girl singing a favourite Nora Jones tune with a great jazz quartet backing her up. I remember too sitting with joy in my heart listenng to Ravi Shankar and his other daughter, the sitar protege.
When I was in Bombay before, I loved that so much music was spiritual. This is such a contrast to modern western music which has a recurring theme of getting drunk or drugged and having strange sex. I am thankful for classical music channels where I can find the glory of Bach and Handel and the profundity of Mozart. I remember loving flying into Tel Aviv and hearing Leonard Cohen in the taxi. His Hallelujah song now compete with the brashness of addiction propaganda. It’s uplifting to me and here there’s the Ballywood love songs reminiscent of the Amercian 50’s big cast musicals and this other deeper more quiet spiritual theme.
I read the edicts of Ashoka at the National Museum of India calling for mutual respect of others, their beliefs and ideas. Mutual respect doesn’t mean we agree but it’s so at contrast to the western university mob thugs like Antifida, the Brownshirts of our day, shouting down any opposing view. I loved Spearker’s Corner in London where anyone could get a soap box. There’s a need for that today. Get these intellectual and spiritual bullies and put them in one place where they can shout and push but lets the rest of us live and let live.
Facebook may yet teach us manners. Here the manners are overall still in tact. However that day to day, person and person appreciation of space and tolerance of others may explain why there are these huge break outs of demonstrations with everyone joining in. The well behaved unconsciously see this as a chance to let the wild out. I saw that years back in Bombay where a group suddenly was ignited and it was a bit of time before things settled again. It is also a land of constant festival.
I’m enjoying meditation. I most enjoyed talking about reality and neurotransmitters, dopamine and yoga with Dr. Raju Hajela. He and his wife were hiking in the mountains and he shared over dinner their wondrous experiences of meditating in old caves where hermits had gone five thousand years ago. Throughout history there are those who go to the mountain and return. The Bodhi tree is such a symbol too. I enjoyed visiting monasteries in Turkey and Israel and Greece, the old desert father places, feeling the gentleness that permeates the space.
We are now off to Ranchi where the Yagoda Satsanga Sakha Math Ranchi Ashram is. This is where Paramahansa Yogananda first taught meditation and heard his call to come to America. He felt that Jesus Christ was leading him. St. Augustine taught mantra or affirmation meditation and breathing and mindfulness.
Dr. Hamelin and discussed Dr. Herbert Benson’s research on Mahareshi’s mantra and how the words could be any, Benson choosing ‘one’ for his research on the physiological benefits of meditation. I associate meditation throughout my university and medical school years with the godliness I knew then and the academic achievement. When I proceeded to study psychoanlytic psychiatry I unfortunately met atheists who told me I couldn’t do both. Indeed my psychiatrist teacher at the time told me meditayion damaged the mind!
Thankfuly I met better and wiser psychiatrists in later years but at the time I was encouraged By my teachers to see marijuana , alcohol and sex as superior. It wasn’t like I was one to argue but the detour in my life took a while to sort out and cost a lot for myself and those around me. It’s actually considered in ‘tantric yoga’ discussion. To Australians it might be called a spiritual walkabout.
Thanks to my Christian mentors like Dr. Willi and Dr. Philip And the orthodox jewish psychologist Dr. Sam I moved beyond Sex and drugs and rock and roll to a new path that was in so many ways like my former trajectory. The spirituality of imperfection comes to mind.
Now here I am ready to pay homage to another great source of the best in my life. I’ve so enjoyed going to the Israel and Rome and Athens and Capadoecia and Istanbul/Constantinople, and St. Patrick’s Ireland and the Coptic churches and monasteries of Ethiopia. I’ve loved the Catholic Cathedrals and Orthodox cathedrals of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
India brings all this spiritual travel to mind and helps me remember we are all just passing through. So be kind.
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