Feeling desperate, I said a spiritual mind treatment (with my father’s help), to find a sense of direction in my contemplative path. Synchronously, a man named Dhammarato (or Richard) contacted me via e-mail after I posted a meditation question on a Yahoo group. In our first skype session, he explained to me that I could learn to work with the breath in specific ways to generate joy and mindfulness, while eliminating the hindrances that I was still struggling with (despite huge improvements). I started gladdening the mind all day long, and by the middle of the month, I was doing short meditation sits which were previously prevented by impatience. In the third week of the month, I began to act with discipline to do household chores and the early stages of life projects. Richard had convinced me that no amount of magical, wishful, or karmically-based thinking would ‘save the day’, and that I would need to learn to gradually build up habits the old fashione...
At the intersection of deep meditation, growing up, and mood disorder.