How I Found Deep Joy After I Stopped Being a Cool Cat

Bye-bye spiritual bypassing! Little did I know that my path to joy would be found in public tears and the expression of anger.

When I was studying Advaita Vedanta and Sanskrit in Rishikesh, India 7 years ago, I got told (and not for the first time):

“You are very angry for a spiritual person.”

While I didn’t take this as a badge of honor, it may surprise some of you that I took it as a compliment. Little did I know my path to joy would be found in public tears and the expression of anger.

Rewind 20 Years Ago from Today

When you are highly repressed, you develop a pseudo-superpower of being a cool cat. You know the type: stoic and calm (at least on the outside.)

I would always show a non-reaction to whatever occurred in my external environment.

A passing comment of:

“Oh Damian, you are always so calm,”

wasn’t uncommon.

But in truth, I was like a duck on water. While appearing to glide across the water with consummate ease. Under the surface was a different story.

In reality, I experienced constant thoughts related to fear and self-doubts in my mind’s eye. It was like being stuck on a treadmill and my legs were running 24/7. Not a moment’s rest, not even while dreaming.

Every morning for decades waking up after 8–10 hours of sleep, feeling like I had been hit by a bus.

It was through reflecting on my experience before going to bed each night that prompted me to act. I decided I had had enough of being a cross between a zombie and a robot. Enough was enough.

Lesson: Five minutes before going to sleep lying in bed, replay your day in mind.

Groundhog Day

My everyday experience was moving through life doing the same things and in the same way. This was accompanied by the same dull feelings and repetitive thoughts.

I went into Sherlock Holmes mode and attacked the internet with vigor to find something or someone skilled in dealing with a repressed robotic zombie.

My investigation continually leads me back to one process.

I first heard of Primal therapy a couple of decades ago. I was hesitant to do due to its reputation. You may know this therapy. It’s where you scream like a madman, a lot. Followed by hitting and punching — the pillows in the room, not the therapist.

Primal therapy focuses on releasing repressed emotions that have been stored in your body and mind. The therapist expertly uses everyday experiences to guide you back to experiences in your childhood. Once ‘there’, you are encouraged to express what was at the time held inside.

The problem with all that crap you held onto at the time is that it plays out in your life right now. But at an unconscious level.

One upside (or downside) is that after going through primal therapy, I can both feel and express my emotions more easily.

Before primal therapy, I couldn’t experience and express my anger. Through encouraged expression, I was now accessing the deep recesses of my being. It was exhilarating and scary.

Sometimes I was successful in expressing my anger outside the primal therapy room and other times, not so much. Hence, the “angry spiritual guy” comments were a mixed blessing. But I saw it as progress!

Learning to experience emotions you have long held onto, mostly unconscious, is a very freeing and liberating experience. Internally, it’s like climbing and conquering a mountain far bigger than Mt Evert.

Continuing my self-reflection sessions at night, I saw my progress. I become my own personal cheer squad. This translated into becoming self-reliant because I didn’t require validation from strangers, friends, family, or co-workers.

Confidence comes after completing something.

Lesson: Find an appropriate therapy that is geared to helping your specific challenge.

I Am a Walking, Talking Cliche

I was a vegan, organic yoga guy with a strict schedule from morning to night. At social gathers and work functions, I would be asked:

“Would you like a soft drink?”

I would scrunch up my face and furrow my brow, like the underside of a mushroom, and wave my hand to indicate a no.

I was far too self-righteously “healthy” for that.

It’s not uncommon for “spiritual” people to use to sit in judgment of others, as I did.

Being caught in this mental construct enables the person to control their environment. Which ultimately covers up long unprocessed shame and hurt related to one’s parents.

Lesson: Mentally note ways in which you look to control your environment.

Welcome to the Freak Show

After being able to express repressed emotions from when I was younger (I am sure there is still a lot there in hiding), I became acutely aware of how I was a control freak.

I was quickly seeing my greatest strengths, were indeed my greatest weaknesses!

Disciplined, calm, non-reactive, discreet, tough, and hardworking were my greatest stumbling blocks to opening up to life.

These ‘positive’ traits helped me excel at work and stand on my head for 8 minutes. But I was using these traits and my spiritual practice to control the external world as a means not to trigger my emotional dystopia inside.

And, sadly, for the most part, it worked.

I didn’t have a lot of drama in my life. But also I didn’t have a lot of love either. I was stopping the bad from coming in, yes, but I wasn’t letting the good stuff in. Captain America’s shields boxed in me on all sides.

So, the traits, while seemly good, if you scratch under the surface were, in a word, disastrous.

After primal therapy cracked me open, I saw the next bread crump on my path to freedom was giving up control. This is serious business and scary shit.

Lesson: Reflect on how your strengths may be having a negative impact on your life.

So We Pray

Although I knew spiritual practice can be a force for evil, I have this inner knowing that it contributes to eternal freedom, if applied appropriately.

So I continued along the spiritual path but with a softer and more inquisitive mindset.

Advaita Vedanta and Zen, while both talk about Awakening in slightly different terms, describe a non-dual experience. Nondual means not 2. A nondual awakening is infinite in nature. Being infinite, there is no boundary.

This experience is said to be your true essence.

Some religions and philosophies talk about the ultimate spiritual experience as a feeling of oneness.

But Non-dual philosophy goes one step further. Because to say you are at one with things still implies a boundary. As one singular thing still has an edge, a boundary.

I know it’s hard to understand. It’s beyond our well-honed intellect.

Lesson: Carrying out your own research into who you are at your essence.

Big Bang

I had a powerful experience the first time I did meditation when I was 20 years old. This set me on the path to follow all this spiritual stuff.

There have been many years of meditating and studying (and suffering) in Indian ashrams.

But alas all to no avail.

What I later came to learn what I was doing all those years was spiritual bypassing. You act like Jesus (I didn’t have much of a beard) but you are emotionally like an infant. You think yourself to be a spiritually developed person, but it’s quite the opposite.

You are avoiding all your problems.

A spiritual bypasser isn’t averse to sitting in their ivy yoga tower, casting internal judgments at those who don’t live up to our lofty spiritual standards.

Lesson: Reflect on whether your personal and spiritual development efforts have resulted in healing and growth or spiritual bypassing.

Where Did I Go?

After 27 years, recently I have started to make some small progress ‘spiritually’.

An indication is what happened last Saturday while I was sitting in meditation with the local Zen group.

Without any warning, I felt a powerful sensation take over. I started to feel a lot bigger than my physical body. I didn’t have control over the growing spaciousness or the intensity of this experience that was taking place.

I was becoming one with everything around me, it was accompanied by a sensation of a vastness fullness. As this took place, I started to lose a sense of my individuality.

To explain it visually, it was like when you see a tea bag dipped into a teacup. The brow tea merges out into the clear hot water. There is no effort or desire on the part of the tea to expand out into the water.

While the experience of becoming aware of a vast, ever-increasing space was pleasant, the other part wasn’t. When I started to lose myself, fear kicked in with an almighty force. The fear made this wonderful experience immediately collapse.

I don’t know where this experience would have taken me, but I am guessing somewhere nice. I am not sure if it is fanciful thinking to suggest it may have taken me to the promised land of a non-dual awakening, but who knows?

“And now sitting in the circle you can share anything about your practice,” the Doshi (it’s a zen term for the person that is running the show) explained as we had re-arranged our sitting cushions in a large circle,

“remember that some people share personal things, so things need to remain in the circle.”

And with the last part of being permitted to share something personal, I started to feel emotional.

I felt self-conscious tears slowly rolling down my face. I was careful to keep my head down so no one saw. I was feeling on the surface shame at being upset in a public place. I couldn’t even tell you exactly what emotions I was feeling that brought on these tears.

At that moment, I remembered a short passage from a book, that read ‘acknowledge your feelings’ internally, then there is no need to express them. I was trying to avoid talking in front of the group.

But to try to process my emotions in this way, I would have to label the sensations and that wouldn’t have captured their beautiful and dynamic nature. Such a process wouldn’t do what I had gone through justice and my tear would have become frozen.

The first and then the second person bowed and gave their experience (you have to bow before speaking.) After the next person completed their sharing, with no thought, I bowed.

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds but wiped my tears away. I was too ashamed to look up. But I did take one peep up and some weird-looking hippy sitting on his cushion directly opposite me was staring at me with an inquisitive look.

So, I glanced back down at the ground.

Before I spoke, I felt like my whole body had been degloved, I felt raw and exposed. I shared, in between a few tears, what happened to me during the meditation. It was by no means a sharing of words of the magnitude as the ‘I had a dream’ speech, but it was pretty powerful all the same, well at least to me.

I took a risk to share in front of the group. When you express yourself openly, people listen and you feel settled inside after you have expressed yourself. This is what it means to be vulnerable and authentic.

Lesson: Sharing your experiences in a group can help to empty out any withheld emotions.

Know that the flip side of anger is hurt and, joy is found in and beyond fear.

But you have to give up control and lose yourself in something unknown to get it.

Happy (non-dual) travels!

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