How Society Grooms Women

Journalist Connie Chung penned an open letter supporting Christine Blasey Ford, while for the first time publicly sharing her own experience with sexual assault. Rachel Yang, Variety.

Shortly after it was published, I read Connie Chung's account of being sexually assaulted by her trusted family physician when she was an innocent young woman seeking birth control. Someone will no doubt have asked, "Why didn't she stop him?" when he brought her to orgasm with his fingers. Such a question would come from someone who has no idea of the strength of social conditioning on females to trust doctors and others in authority positions.

Feeling sick to my stomach, I remembered a similar experience when I went to a gynecologist before my first marriage. Though not as naive as Connie Chung had been, I wasn't sure about the physiology of sexual intercourse, and the doctor was a woman. So, when she explained that she was slowly stretching my hymen tissue so I wouldn't feel any pain on intercourse, I didn't stop her, even though I felt its inappropriateness, especially because I'd told her about being raped at age 16. Nonetheless, I did exactly what Chung did, kept quiet and afterwards dashed out of there as quickly as I could, embarrassed and ashamed.

We tend to think of sexual grooming as specific to child sexual abuse, but the elements are the same in any form of abuse -- the appeal of a relationship with someone who gives you special attention, the underlying assertion of power not evident until trust is established, and the sense of secrecy based on the expectation of not being believed, or chastised if believed. Those negative judgments can be overt or covert.

In the case of my being raped as a teenager, I was on a family trip to Scotland, my parents knew I was walking on the beach near the hotel where we were staying, and they looked for me when I was not back after dark. Yet when I finally stumbled in, the police they called insisted on a medical exam to make sure I was telling the truth.

And then MY PARENTS NEVER MENTIONED THE SITUATION AGAIN! No one asked if I wanted to talk about it, no one assured me that stopping to chat with the man did not make the rape my fault, no one commented on my sudden need to have a light on in my room at night.

The Scottish man who raped me used an abbreviated form of sexual grooming--approaching me when there was still daylight with a casual question about my being American and some conversation about the golf tournament I mentioned my Dad was there to attend, treating me like an adult without ever being openly seductive, then offering to walk me back to the hotel, as it was getting dark. A very nice local man being thoughtful to a tourist. I was flattered and trusting, only half-way back to the hotel realizing--while deep in conversation--he'd walked me to an area away from the lights where sand dunes blocked a clear view from the road. When we saw the headlights of a car--which I knew was my father because one of the lights was out--the rapist clapped a hand over my mouth and said, "If you make a sound, I will kill you."

Why am I posting this in "The Only Gate is Now?" Because this blog is where I've written about surviving another kind of death threat -- breast cancer -- and reminds me that no matter what life brings, "there's nowhere to go, there's nothing else to be." Staying present for me means not numbing out, not dissociating from the emotions that flashbacks arouse. I dealt with my anger at the rapist of the past, but not until forty years after the event, awakening terrified from a nightmare and writing it down so I wouldn't numb out again, emotions that eventually found a home in my poem, "Union."

I had to allow the anger to move through me again when aroused by Brett Kavanaugh's appointment in spite of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony and his obvious lack of integrity, and beyond these specific events to the larger world we live in, characterized by the ascent of greed and dominance of wealthy white males, to the exclusion and--often--terror of anyone not part of that club.

I Choose Authenticity

(Published in The Enneagram of Death: Helpful Insights by the 9 Types of People on Grief, Fear, and Dyling, 2012)

Authenticity is a daily practice. Choosing authenticity means cultivating the COURAGE to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable; exercising the COMPASSION that comes from knowing we are all made of strength and struggle and connected to each other through a loving and resilient human spirit; nurturing the CONNECTION and sense of belonging that can only happen when we let go of what we are supposed to be and embrace who we are. Brené Brown, Ph.D.

Many people who've had cancer report significant changes in their lives and a gratitude that might seem strange to those who haven't been there. Having had breast cancer, I realize how difficult it is to put into words the gratitude I felt. Of course I'm grateful to be alive, grateful to all the helping professionals, friends, and acquaintances who were part of my healing, grateful to my body that the cancer didn't spread through the lymph nodes, grateful that I didn't have to have chemo. But my gratitude spread beyond those happy aspects -- I was grateful to the cancer because it brought me into greater presence than I'd ever experienced.

The important question became, "Now that I am present to my impermanence, how do I live every moment going forward?" The answer to this question was not a conscious decision. It bloomed in me as a consequence of opening myself, of having yielded and embraced breast cancer. The biggest lesson I learned was how I'd contributed to the burden of caretaking I'd felt -- in my life and in my work -- by keeping the focus completely on other people and not asking for what I needed. I was giving, but not allowing myself to receive. 

Caretaking fed my ego and also exhausted me. Having cancer required that I learn how to ask for help and be clear to those around me what kind of help I needed: to be listened to, encouraged to talk about myself. Instead, my gift of focusing on the positive had taken charge, and left no room for feeling tired, disoriented, lonely, or that dreaded state -- NEEDY.  Everyone was rejoicing in how brave and amazing I was, while some newly acknowledged part of me simply wanted to curl up and be held. 

Exactly as Dr. Brené Brown's research on authenticity suggests, I'm more connected now because I learned a new kind of courage -- to be imperfect (needy), to set boundaries (ask for what I want and don't want), to allow myself to be vulnerable (admitting these needs without shame), and along with this came true compassion (giving is no longer a one-way street). Thus, I'm grateful to Dr. Brown for having put into words the lesson I most needed to learn.

Once my energy and mental balance returned, instead of feeling I was "back to my old self," I found myself "going forward into a new self," one that has a squishy part I didn't have before. Vulnerability can be interpreted as feeling defenseless, exposed, insecure. My new squishy part has none of those negative connotations. It has made me softer, more yielding, tender, sensitive, open, and accessible.

The Enneagram: A Compelling Vision

Susan Olesek's TED talk on behalf of the Enneagram Prison Project (EPP), Both Sides of the Bars, is the most compelling Enneagram presentation I've ever seen, for her own transparency, for her clarity and vision, for her compelling examples, for her intelligent presentation, and most of all for the power of her presence. This is the finest example of how life-changing the Enneagram can be in the hands of someone on an authentic spiritual journey. See also this Forbes article about Olesek's work.

The Pattern That Connects

"Premonitions open us up to each other and to the greater world... they show that we are part of something larger than the individual self, that we are an element in the great pattern that connects." Dr. Larry Dossey

The opening story of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking should convince even the most skeptical that there are ways of knowing beyond the ability to make logical connections:

"A team of experts with state-of-the-art measurement tools took more than a year to assure the authenticity of a supposedly ancient Greek statue the Getty Museum of California was going to purchase for $10 million. Then several art experts looked at the statue and knew instantly it was a fake. One said he "heard" the word fresh, which seemed odd to him, but on further examination he realized the statue was too "fresh" to be that ancient." (David Brooks, New York Times).

We all have the capability to access these versions of a "sixth sense" although many shy away from that possibility, especially those who fear the unfamiliar. Even the word premonition carries an aura of foreboding - that something "bad" is going to happen.

When we're fully present, however, the possibilities are neither good nor bad, we're simply open to a broader context of knowing, a larger "mind" or "field." Whether you experience this knowing as a feeling in your bones, an image, or a nagging thought, it's saying to you, in Larry Dossey's words, "Wake up. The evidence for a larger world is staring you in the face."

Dream Journaling

For years, I've used Clyde H. Reid's Dreams: Discovering Your Inner Teacher as a straightforward format (based on Jungian dream analysis) to walk myself through the key aspects of a dream:

• Date of dream:

• Title:

• Motif:

• The dream in detail:
• Context: what's happening in my life at this time?

• In this dream, who are the main characters known to me before?
     Name: 
     Outstanding characteristics:  
     What part of me is this?

•  Who are the main characters not known to me?
      Same sex figures (shadow)?
      Opposite sex figures (anima/animus)?

• What are the outstanding features of this dream (flood, explosion, animal, house, etc)?
      What part of me is this feature or image? What is it saying to me?
      What important symbols appeared? How are they related to me?

• What archetypes may be manifesting themselves here?

• What feelings did I have during/after the dream?

• What other thoughts, ideas, or memories does this dream trigger in me?

Audacious Ekphrasis

In December I accepted the role of Editor-in-Chief for Bacopa Literary Review. Below is a copy of my first post on our Editors Blog:

If you want to know more about me, Googling Mary Bast will first evoke echoes of my other life as an Enneagram coach and related books. But I've also written flash memoir and several forms of poetry including found poetry and ekphrasis, an audacious poetic form that's among many we're encouraging for Bacopa 2016.
You'll find a long history and many definitions of ekphrasis. I like the most open, contemporary version best:

Ekphrasis: the intersection of verbal and visual arts.

I first learned about ekphrastic poetry in a workshop with Melanie Almeder, who drew our attention to two famous poems written in response to Pieter Brueghel's painting, The Fall of Icarus: William Carlos Williams' "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" and W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts." 

Note that Williams' poem to some degree follows the tradition of describing the visual scene (a farmer was ploughing / his field / the whole pageantry / of the year was / awake tingling / with itself), while Auden's interpretation is a bit wider (About suffering they were never wrong, / the old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position: how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window).

Almeder invited workshop participants to write our own poems in response to the Brueghel painting, encouraging us to range as far as our muses would go. My poem "plummet" (published in Bacopa Literary Review 2012) imagined Icarus as a woman:

somewhere
there is an Icarus
a woman who flies 

on intricate
feathered web
of covert

sheath
shaft
veins

warm-blooded
she breathes faster
learns to soar

ignores
the admonition
do not fly too high

her efforts full
of sky
of wind

her breasts
still flecked with honey
dripped from wings' wax

heavy with her father's
architecture
heavier than water

when she dives
no sun's light
scuffs the surface

As a visual artist I've explored other ways to interpret "the intersection of verbal and visual arts." For example, in response to Kim Addonizio's poem "Divine" (Oh hell, here's that dark wood again. / You thought you'd gotten through it--), I created my acrylic painting, "Oh hell, here's that dark wood again." Then I reacted to my own painting with the poem "Backdraft" (again the dark wood. / Guardian of the Abyss hovering above / like a gold flame to incinerate what's left of my life). 

Developing Intuition

In The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals, Gavin de  Becker described a childhood where his ability to sniff out his mother's moods quite literally meant survival. As an adult he parlayed this keenly developed intuition into a world-renowned business -- serving victims of domestic abuse and stalking, evaluating threats to political and media figures, and proposing new laws to help manage violence. His book could be a manual for healthy intuition:

I have gotten great benefits from taking the voice of skepticism I used to apply to my intuition and applying it instead to the dreaded outcomes I imagined were coming. Worry will almost always buckle under a vigorous interrogation. If you can bring yourself to apply your imagination to finding the possible favorable outcomes of undesired developments, even if only as an exercise, you'll see that it fosters creativity. . . Worry is a choice, and the creative genius we apply to it can be used differently, also by choice.

We're all trained to be analytical, and consequently to doubt intuition that isn't tied to direct knowing or experience. In her introduction to Inner Knowing, Helen Palmer admitted that her "anchor in intellectualism made it difficult to accept even profoundly convincing intuition as being meaningful and real." Palmer was referring to several incidents of her own inner knowing, the first of which occurred when she was deeply involved in the East Coast movement of resistance to the Vietnam War: "My imagination became as believable and solid as the furniture in my room." She knew, for example, that a friend must take a route across the Canadian border different from the one planned, and later learned that others who took the original route were stopped and arrested.

Many people describe intuition as a hunch based on experience. In a New York Times review (1/16/05), David Brooks summarized the opening story of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. The Getty Museum in California had planned to purchase a supposedly ancient Greek statue for almost $10 million. A team of experts with state-of-the-art measurement tools had taken more than a year to assure its authenticity. Then several art experts looked at the statue and knew instantly it was a fake. When asked to explain how they knew, one said he heard the word fresh, which seemed odd to him, but on further examination he realized the statue was too "fresh" to be that ancient. Another felt a wave of intuitive repulsion. The outcome? "The teams of analysts who did 14 months of research turned out to be wrong. The historians who relied on their initial hunches were right."

I encourage you to develop trust in your hunches, whether experience-based or seeming to come out of nowhere, the kind of intuition that has served me so well and that led Helen Palmer to found the Center for the Investigation and Training of Intuition. Maybe you'll only feel a nudge. Something feels right about this, though I'm not sure why.

Dr. Michael Ray, author of Creativity in Business and The New Paradigm in Business, offered five truths about intuition.

1. Intuition can be developed. You have intuition within you. Accept responsibility to develop your individual style of intuition.
2. Intuition and reason are complements. Reason, experience, information and intuition are a powerful combination.
3. Intuition is unemotional. It involves paying clear attention to the most appropriate alternative that comes from your creative Essence.
4. Intuition thrives on action. Follow-through is important to make use of your creative ideas, and intuition is strengthened by seeing its manifest effects. 
5. Intuition is mistake-free. Sometimes your intuitions will be on target and sometimes not. The more you develop it, the more often it will be on target. Your intuition will grow when you have faith that it doesn't make mistakes -- it just offers new possibilities.

Mindfulness: Experience the Experience

Listening to Dr. Ronald Siegel in a Mindfulness webinar, I was struck by his observation that the common factor underlying all psychological disorders is "experiential avoidance."

Notice how you typically handle painful experiences. Do you tell yourself "I can't stand it" or "If I let myself go there I'll never be happy again"? When we retreat from life this way we deny our own healing resources. When we're mindful we allow ourselves to be present to experience.

Mindfulness is not limited to meditating on a prayer cushion for 20 minutes morning and night. "Many of us are so busy," Dr. Siegel writes, "that the thought of adding one more thing--no matter how potentially beneficial--is just too much. The good news is that mindfulness practice can be taken up in different ways to suit different lifestyles."
 

Here's an excerpt from "Nature Meditation" in his book, The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems:

Turn your attention fully to the world around you. If you can get to a window or go outside, use the natural world as a focus. If you need to stay in a room and can't go to the window, you can do the same thing with the walls, floor, and objects in the room. The idea is to systematically look at everything in your visual field and describe it. If your mind wanders to thoughts or body sensations, just gently bring it back to the outside world. As with walking meditation, this can be used as a formal meditation practice, replacing breath meditation during particularly anxious times, or as an informal practice as you go about your day.

A Strong Drink

Humor is a good antidote to untested assumptions and a marvelous way to elicit change at a symbolic level. It shakes us loose. For example, in a workshop on personality types I handed out a variety of Slammers — beanie-type toys that make a sound when you throw them down on a hard surface. Participants had great fun with these, sometimes slamming them down on the table to make a point during the discussion.

• For Skeptics, who worry about what could go wrong, their Slammer was a puppy dog that shouted, “Oh, no!”
• For Helpers, who take care of others’ needs and forget their own, their Slammer had a puckered-up mouth and made the sound of a big, smacking kiss.
• My own Peacemaker types tend to merge with others' agendas and fail to speak up for ourselves; when we threw our Slammer down… it made no sound at all!

A friend says we Peacemakers are easy to tease and enjoy self-deprecating humor. That may be true. While reading Iris Murdoch’s The Green Knight, I laughed out loud at this passage:

“What he saw might have been her pity for him, her sympathy. Or perhaps just her kindness, the way in which, ever after as he watched her, she instinctively made all things better, speaking no evil, disarming hostility, turning ill away, making peace: her gentleness, which made her seem, sometimes, to some people, weak, insipid, dull. ‘She’s not exactly a strong drink!’ someone said.”

Ironic that my favorite cocktail is a Godfather. Hmmm. I might be symbolically drinking strength. Anyway, as I've matured I've become a stronger drink, stepping up, shouting out; my paintings and my tastes in poetry are becoming less and less rule-bound.

I LOST MY BOOBS, NOT MY SENSE OF HUMOR proudly stated my post breast cancer t-shirt more than five years ago. So my son Dylan Schwab helped me create a rap about having no breasts (click here). I was inspired by Anne Hathaway, who is Sweetness personified (and I’m sure has very nice breasts), performing her paparazzi rap:

Like a Flower...

The following interchange with a reader who's an Enneagram style Five tells a story. Read it and note how she opens up (and gives permission).... 

Dear Mary: I'm an Enneagram Five, and lead a pretty full life doing social work, but I'm 50 and have never been in love with anyone. Looking at myself objectively, it seems a tiny bit sad, but not enough to do anything concrete about it. I hate the idea of sifting through many people, and maybe some will be compatible. It wears me out just thinking about listening to all those people, so I convince myself it's better to be alone, unless someone compatible just happens to cross my path. Thank you for the service you provide to those seeking more knowledge. Will anyone else see this note?

Dear Reader: I understand how satisfying life can be when work is interesting. However, you do imply that a relationship might be worthwhile ("I convince myself it's better to be alone"), if you could find someone without "sifting," or perhaps if listening were not so exhausting for you.You asked, "Will anyone else see this note?" Not if you don't want them to.I'm reading a fascinating novel by Irvin Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept. I believe Neitzsche as described by Yalom was an Enneagram Five. Perhaps if you read Yalom's book you might find something interesting that applies to you. 

Dear Mary: Thank you for recommending the book; I'll read it... I thought a secretary or helper might respond and only on a public web page. I even tear up my journals promptly because I can't bear the thought that someone might read my innermost thoughts, so yes, I'd like my notes to be private. I interact with so many people each day, my time alone is pretty much a gift. I believe I would interact well with anyone who knows the Enneagram and is healthy in whatever style they happen to be, but I don't know a soul who has done more than read one book about it or just glanced at the subject. Are there any Enneagram students in my area? Thank you immensely for your time.

Dear Reader: I'm sending you information about the closest chapter of the International Enneagram Association (IEA). There's a page at the IEA web site with news about regional chapters that may be a source of information for you. I recommend joining the IEA if you haven't already. Even if you're not a "joiner" it's a way to gather useful information. Also, I hope you'll attend the annual Enneagram conference.By the way, I give my time freely, and not totally without self-interest. Often these inquiries lead to an article, which supports my writing. Even when someone like you asks that nothing be published, I always learn something from the interaction; so this interaction is a resource for me, too. For example, in thinking about how to respond to you, and re-reading When Nietzsche Wept in that light, I noticed Nietzsche as described by Yalom is very sensitive to weather changes, and very sensitive to touch.This led me to remember a wonderful book (and tape), Oliver Sacks' An Anthropologist on Mars. One of his stories is about Temple Grandin, an adult woman with autism who created a sling to comfort and carry cattle. She then got the idea to create her own "squeeze machine" because from early childhood she longed to be touched but couldn't tolerate it. She lies in her sling daily, with controls that allow her to create as much or as little pressure as she wishes. A wonderful metaphor. 

Dear Mary: If others can learn from anything I might share, feel free to go ahead and publish any of my comments. I'm evolving and I know one of the greatest things we can do is share with one another. I trust you and will make every effort to attend the conference. Thanks for all your information; know that I will use it. About the touch issue. I love being held and always longed for that as a child, but being from a large family, my parents didn't have a lot of individual time for me, though we each felt completely loved by them and by each other. My relationships seem to be those in which I give much of myself, but only about three or four people are capable of giving to me in the manner I prefer to receive. A therapist held me perfectly only three times over a period of about a year and a half, and that memory sustains me anytime I need to be reminded of what it might be like if our creator could be here in person, to allow me to feel his/her love and my connection to what we are other than just being a part of this world. I'm hugged often by children and friends, but I can never bring myself to ask anyone to hold me. If there is anything you ever want to ask me, feel free; and you may use it in any way you deem beneficial. I've seen the benefits of your sharing.

A Sacred Sorrow

"Going to pieces or falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed it is as essential to evolutionary and psychic transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells... What 'disintegrates' in periods of rapid transformation is not the self, of course, but its defenses and ideas... [opening] us up to new perceptions, new data, new responses." Joanna Macy, Chapter 16, Sacred Sorrows

My first cracking of the shell, when it hit, was comparable to what's been depicted by others: a sense of emptiness when approaching activities that had been fulfilling, disorientation, feeling separate from others and from myself (I could look in the mirror and not even recognize my own face). It was also clear I'd walked through a door that had shut tight behind me. 

That step into a space between the worlds was taken in the Spring of 1997, when I ended my second Naranjo workshop with a deep commitment to engage fully with life. For the first month afterwards I did just that. Then I fell into depression of a kind different from the familiar and transitory times of feeling dispirited. I finally realized that for me to really engage (the Nine's spiritual goal) I'd have to go through a wild and scary ride. 

I've read many books and articles about depression and about transformation. There are accounts from survivors of depression and references to spiritual struggles, but few personal stories of how transformation can occur during these dark times, how people are different as a consequence of this experience that disconnects them from all that's familiar. It appears that many who experience the pain of transition stop the process -- by taking antidepressants, being unwilling to endure the discomfort, and/or failing to recognize this could be a passage to something new and not simply a dark and endless tunnel with no light at the end.

Based on my own experience, if you use the Enneagram beyond playing games to categorize people, you will find yourself on the path of transformation whether you expected that to happen or not. I'm not a Catholic, so didn't originally turn to such resources as Suzanne Zuercher's Enneagram Spirituality:

"What does this surrender based on the necessity to admit our truth feel like? It is the experience of anguish, because anguish is to be aware of, to admit, what we cannot accept and embrace about ourselves... Such pain gradually lessens as we become more humble, simply acknowledging what is so."

As much as I admire Zuercher's work, however, her examples are generic and related to Christian scripture and beliefs. Riso and Hudson have broadened our perspective in The Wisdom of the Enneagram, writing that the "great religions of the world have provided a multitude of practices for personal transformation; so have modern psychology, the self-help movement, and contemporary spiritual thinkers." They also disclosed some of their own transformation process:

"Part of our discussion had to do with whether or not we would ever see the proverbial 'light at the end of the tunnel,' since each of us was constantly going through a fair amount of pain as we uncovered layers of neurotic habits and unresolved issues from the past… Even though excavating the various strata of the psyche meant going through layers of pain and negativity, making conscious the old accumulated psychic junk that we had not wished to deal with, it would be worth it." 

Over the years I've heard the voices of all nine styles. I don't think I'm crazy. Quite the opposite. Caroline Myss (Spiritual Madness: The Journey of the Modern Mystic Through the Dark Night of the Soul) said we invite spiritual madness whenever we say "I want to see clearly." 

I've come to view the nine points as representing passions with which we all struggle, though a stronger dynamic exists for the personality fixed at that point. And I've been in and out of the abyss as if batted around the Enneagram, experiencing the dark night of the soul from the perspective of all nine styles, particularly the Four, the Five, the Seven, and my own, the Nine. This has given me more empathy for the varieties of distress each style must encounter. And each point has valuable lessons:

One of the ways I've experienced a Four-like anguish is an existential angst, a mourning for all the pain and evil in the world and an attraction to "doing something about it" (e.g., volunteering to take meals to AIDS victims) without actually moving past my emotions and taking action. My own experience reflects that of one of my Four friends: when I'm in this place of mourning I avoid meditation/prayer because of the fear that if I looked for my essential Self "there might be no one home." When I can stay with this fear I remember myself, become more clear about what I value, and act accordingly.

When my sense of desolation takes a Nine tone I feel a deep fatigue; avoiding the energy, focus, meditation/prayer that would be required to discover my true will and purpose. I'm now better able to observe my fear that if I looked, there might be "someone home" and that discovery would require action! Now when I notice myself avoiding engagement (energy, commitment) I stay with the fear, it ceases to control me, and I feel a sense of contentment and even joy. More and more I find myself committing with enthusiasm to people/projects that match my own agenda and values.

During one whole month I experienced a Five-like down time, a retreat into intellectual safety, much reading and analysis, a strong discomfort with sharing my own deep emotions. But I experienced it from afar, observing it to exist more strongly than ever before, but at the same time separate from "me." By the end of that month I easily and generously connected with family, friends, clients and enjoyed those connections freely: sitting in the middle of friendship in a way I'd never experienced. I was not conscious of a plan to work through my feelings, but I did commit myself to staying centered and enduring the "madness." As Myss pointed out, my answer didn't come in a letter! It came in the changes I saw in myself after I returned.

My Seven-ish spiritual madness, when it shows, is more a manic state of avoiding deep work, a sense of unbearable pain and fear of confinement -- a fear that if I get down in there I won't like it and I'll never be able to find my way out. Because it is so dread-full, I bring myself out of it quickly. But the learning from this shadow work is fantastic. This is where I hear the voices of addiction yet being separate from them. For example, I've become able to hear the ego aspect that says, Wouldn't it be fun to stop writing and go out for a chocolate sundae; then you'll feel so much better. Or, Wouldn't it be fun, instead of going home and working on that project, to stop by this department store and see what's on sale? When I can sit with the feelings and ask myself, What do I really want? the answer is always some version of a journey to the Soul.

I still sometimes fall deep into sorrow. But as Clarence Thomson said to me, "I'm amazed at the intuitive intelligence of some of my Nine friends. Our culture doesn't always support this kind of intelligence, even when, and especially when, it's hard to put into words." Well, I have learned to trust the sorrow is sacred and my intuitive intelligence, my gut sense, my Essential Self will guide me in the process of self-remembering, my spiritual unfolding.   

A Gathering of Flowers

In the foreword to Healers on Healing, Dr. W. Brugh Joy tells us the word anthology means "a gathering of flowers." 

Editors Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield gathered these essays to affirm alternative approaches to healing, asking teachers from various perspectives to help define the golden thread that unites all healing methods.

Below are some representative insights:

Rachel Naomi Remen created The Healer's Art, an innovative curriculum for medical students on reintegrating the heart and soul into contemporary medicine and restoring its integrity as a calling and a work of healing. She's a model of the Wounded Healer archetype, describing the two people in a healing relationship as peers, both wounded and both with healing capacity. "I don't believe one person heals another. I believe we invite the other person into a healing relationship. You may feel lost, frightened, trapped. My woundedness allows me to find you and be with you in a way that's nonjudgmental."

Richard Moss has taught about conscious relationship for more than thirty years. "When I was a traditional physician," he wrote, "I was content to regard healing as the restoration of health. But today I know healing is far more than a return to a former condition. True healing means drawing the circle of our being larger and becoming more inclusive, more capable of loving. In this sense, healing is not for the sick alone, but for all humankind." Describing healing as "a mystery," he continues: "In the end, healing must be a ceaseless process of relationship and rediscovery, moment by moment. The more we 'know' about healing, the more we are simultaneously carried toward something unknowable. For this reason all healing is in essence spiritual."

Joan Borysenko, psychologist and Harvard Medical School trained cell biologist, says healing is the rediscovery of who we are and who we've always been. "The message that underlies healing is simple yet radical: We are already whole... Underneath our fears and worries, unaffected by the many layers of our conditioning and actions, is a peaceful core. The work of healing is peeling away the barriers of fear that keep us unaware of our true nature of love, peace, and rich interconnection with the web of life."  

Jack Schwartz, a pioneer in holistic health research and education, saw disease as a stagnant state where we hold back energy that can be released when we align ourselves with the process of transformation. The disease label creates "an attitude that constricts our life energy's flow, as if an enemy is attacking us from outside." He asked that healers be mapmakers or guides who walk alongside clients, showing them how to overcome the fear of change and release their own power.  

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, noted worldwide for her work in death, dying, and transition, believed people who are ill are often blocked by guilt, shame, or ambivalence. Once we learn to love and trust ourselves the spiritual dimension begins to open up and we're ready for healing. She also believed healing occurs at more than an individual level because each of us is "connected through a vast network of relationships to innumerable other people and creatures on the planet."  

Hugh Prather, crisis therapist, columnist, and minister, believed it's a mistaken assumption that healing necessarily means a physical improvement, and it's not up to us to prejudge the form of healing for a given person. Nor is it helpful to judge ourselves or others for being ill. "The pronouncement that cancer is caused by an inability to love, or that colds are signs of lack of joy, or that AIDS is the manifestation of sinful-mindedness would not be made in the first place if we had not already judged illness as wrong."

 

An Interpretation of the Meaning of "Crisis"

Years ago my  tai chi teacher said these Chinese characters represent Crisis, the top character a symbol for Danger, the bottom character a symbol for Opportunity. 

Countering this interpretation as "inaccurate pseudo-profundity" is Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Adhering to what he describes as a realistic approach, Mair is concerned that "Adopting a feel-good attitude toward adversity... "lulls people into welcoming crises as unstable situations from which they can benefit."  

But Mair's rational approach is only one part of the human equation. Growing emotionally and spiritually from crisis is not the same as a "feel-good attitude" and certainly doesn't mean we should welcome traumatic circumstances. But difficult or life-threatening situations do provide an opening for growth.

Many people I coached, who had undergone bankruptcy, cancer, or divorce, said that those events--though temporarily debilitating and fraught with fear and pain--stopped the treadmill they'd been on and forced them to look at what really matters in a relatively short lifetime.

The Dark Night of the Soul

From Linda Schierse Leonard, "The Dark Night of the Soul," Chapter 7 in Sacred Sorrows, pp. 51-52

"The Abyss was the place of transformation for the mystics. In its depths shone the illumination of the 'divine dark,' where divinity revealed itself. Dionysius the Areopagite even speaks of God as the 'Divine Darkness' and sees darkness as the secret dwelling place of God . . . 

My painting, "Dark Night of the Soul"

"Another of the great mystics, St. John of the Cross, speaks of the 'secret stair' by which one descends in the dark night to meet the Beloved — the way the soul journeys into union with God. But prior to that union of ecstatic rapture with the Beloved comes the Dark Night of the Soul, that painful period of privation when one feels imprisoned in The Abyss . . .

"Evelyn Underhill, in her classic study of mysticism, describes this as follows:

Psychologically, then, the 'Dark Night of the Soul' is due to the double fact of the exhaustion of an old state, and the growth toward a new state of consciousness. It is a 'growing pain' in the organic process of the self's attainment of the Absolute. The great mystics, creative geniuses in the realm of character, have known instinctively how to turn these psychic disturbances to spiritual profit...

For the great mystics, such periods of chaos and misery often lasted months or even years before the new and higher state of spirituality is reached; often the dark side is experienced before the possibility of the new is apprehended... Heroism is required to endure and not succumb to the danger and the pain. The mystical journey is neither rational nor linear."

Eating the "I"

I love the phrase, Eating the "I." We're constantly eating ego, constantly chewing on, "How does it show up?" I'm much better able to do this than I used to be. I can't always get out of the grip, but I usually ask, O.K., what's my ego doing? What defenses are up? And I'm better at loving myself regardless of what I observe.

Most people interacting with me probably find me much the same as I've always been. The difference is in what happens internally when my patterns come up. I sort for understanding differently. I experience myself differently. I'm more open to my foibles. I'm much more forgiving of myself.


This was brought home to me when talking to a friend with Enneagram style Four who said, "The same old stuff comes up again, and I hate seeing it time after time after time."

These patterns may show up forever. You have to love yourself anyway.

Your old habits won't react as automatically, you'll judge yourself less and less harshly, the struggles won't be as difficult, and you'll be less hooked most of the time. But, for as long as you live, your worldview will still have some influence over your reactions. 

All my resistances, of course, are true to my Enneagram Nine style – to "forget" myself until I was in my thirties, to see myself as my idealized image of "the good girl." In particular, I've become aware of how distractibility can keep me from my own focus. The most important and visible manifestation of my dawning awareness has been to find my own voice and follow it without distraction.

When I Wish, I Blow Bubbles...

In Wishing Well Paul Pearsall drew upon the Hawaiian kahuna (shaman) tradition – that we can wish "well" or "poorly." Sometimes we want a specific outcome so much we find it difficult to surrender to the larger healing.

"Wishing is the enemy of the positive thinker who prides herself on being so strong-willed that there is little need for mysticism or the equanimity of wishing. Wishing is much too passive, gentle, and humble for the needy and power-motivated brain. So in wishing well we let go of needing to be in control, of expecting a specific outcome. We focus on serenity, delight, purpose, meaning, and compassion vs. 'trying' to heal a certain part of the body in a certain way. It involves a kind of easy flow with the cosmos."

This quality is conveyed by one person who said, 'When I wish, I blow bubbles...'" 

Relax, be patient, wish from the heart (vs. the mind), connect lovingly, allow surrender of the self.

Beyond Skepticism

Years ago a colleague challenged my skepticism about the usefulness of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. “Have you studied the MBTI?” he asked. “Have you been trained in it?”  I had not, I told him. “Then perhaps you should know what you’re saying ‘No’ to.” Luckily I was open enough to see the flaw in my logic. I did take the training, if only to be able to give an informed “No.” Instead, I’ve found ways to go deeper with the MBTI than my early, negative, uninformed experience of it could have predicted.

Skepticism can be healthy. Woe to those of us who believe everything we read or are told. To the Greeks, in fact, “skepticism” meant inquiry, the essence of their position not doubt or denial or disbelief, but rather continual exploration – a willingness to keep their minds open to new possibilities.

But when skepticism reflects a closed mind instead of an inquiring mind, it becomes a defense against learning more, against possibly changing a familiar worldview. The basis for this kind of skepticism is fear. When I labeled the MBTI as “superficial” I was new to consulting, eager to defend my own training and credentials, and quick to dismiss something I knew very little about. I was afraid to change my point of view – I needed to believe I knew all I needed to know. I thought I was right; others were wrong.

The name calling itself is a cue to defensiveness. And while my describing the MBTI as “superficial” was only slightly demeaning, the attitude behind any word can color it significantly. During a recent check-up with a doctor I’m very fond of, I mentioned I’d contributed to Obama’s campaign. The immediate, sour look on his face told me he found my point of view completely unacceptable. He stepped back and said with distaste in his voice, “He’s a MUSLIM!” Aside from the fact that Obama does not pray to Allah, as far as I know, so what? Romney is a Mormon and Mormons have some beliefs that differ, I’m sure, from my doctor’s fundamental Christian upbringing. His comment about Obama was not founded in skeptical inquiry, it was based on fear of the unknown.

When I heard that some cynics were questioning the healing qualities of my qigong classes, I wanted to ask “Do you really believe that thousands of us, representing all ages and from all walks of life (students, professors, artists, Ph.D.’s, medical and other professionals) are completely deluded about benefits we directly experience?” But I’ve learned the hard way that no amount of evidence will convince someone whose mind is closed. So let me simply offer my condolences to anyone who jumps to negative conclusions and name-calling about my qigong practice, instead of following skepticism’s true intent of inquiry. If only they knew what they’re missing.

Sand Mandalas

Now often demonstrated by the Dalai Lama and groups of Tibetan monks, the sand mandala ceremony begins with chants, music, prayers, and then pouring millions of grains of sand in bright colors from a metal tube called a chakpu. The finished mandala is about five by five feet in diameter, and takes three to five days to complete.

The creation process concludes with a consecration ceremony, and then... they dismantle the mandala!

Formed into traditionally prescribed Tibetan iconography that includes geometric shapes and historical Buddhist symbols, the sand mandala is a tool to consecrate and bless the earth and its inhabitants. The dismantling of the mandala symbolizes the impermanence of all existence.

Those of us who have become attached to life, and fearful of losing it, have much to learn.

Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Death!

Chiron taught his students how to become "sacred warriors;" how to follow their quests and then go to death peacefully when the time comes. He taught his students how to access multidimensionality and balance polarization and duality. Today we might call such people shaman, -- those who have learned to walk in other dimensions, work with duality, synthesize male and female, human and animal, mind and body, life and death. M.Z. Hawkins, Chiron and the Tarot 

I had a distressing encounter with the gynecologist I'd been going to for years, when I went in for a pap smear last week. He knew I had extremely low hormone levels from the post-breast cancer medication I was taking, and was thus dry as a prune -- yet jammed the speculum into me, saying "Sorry if this is uncomfortable."

Uncomfortable? It hurt like hell. But not as much as the way he responded to my talking about alternative approaches to lowering estrogen without diminishing brain function. Our brains need some hormones to function properly, and the so-called "brain fog" side effect of my prescribed aromatase inhibitor had become such a problem I was having panic attacks. After a lengthy attempt to get him to hear me, and his saying, "With all due respect..." which you know means no respect at all, I got it. He's been programmed to believe only in magic bullets, and to postpone death as long as possible, no matter what the patient has to go through to stay alive. 

My internist, perhaps not coincidentally a woman, was completely the opposite -- she listened, asked questions, and responded that she, too, would choose quality of life over years lived.

By the way, my risk of recurrence is only one in four without any medication. Also, that statistic only refers to "women my age." It doesn't take level of activity, weight, diet, or other lifestyle factors into account. So I believe I'm more likely than most 73-year-old women to be one of the three in four who don't have a recurrence.

Nonetheless, the oncologist had convinced me that decreasing that risk to one in eight made potential side effects worthwhile, and besides, "not everyone has side effects." So I was a good sport. And I'm not chickenhearted. I handled the headaches and the joint pain. Even when my hips ached so much that every step was an effort, I still got on the treadmill every day. But eventually my thinking became so confused I couldn't get my mind around large concepts or organize my thoughts. Creative writing was out. So was painting. I had no energy for much of anything. The "me" of me was gone. Not acceptable.

After ten months on the aromatase inhibitor, I chose to stop taking it. With the support of my preventive medicine practitioner (also a respected M.D.) I'm keeping track of my estrogen level, experimenting with alternative ways to keep it low but not so low I can't think.

And from now on, I'm partnering only with wounded healers, doctors and other health workers who are in touch with and have learned from their own pain, and who don't let fear of death get in the way of responding to a vibrant woman who would rather die than lose her capacity to think clearly.

(Published in Survivor's Review, Volume No. XIV, 2013.

The Beauty Way

In Be Careful What You Pray For... You Just Might Get It, Dr. Larry Dossey describes the Navajo belief in the power of words, the importance of thinking and speaking in a positive way – in "the Beauty Way."

Counter this with how easily caretakers can affect a patient's recovery with such hexes as, "Only 2% of people with this kind of cancer survive more than a year."

Of course, doctors don't intend to do us in. Nonetheless, the harm can be real: "Medical curses such as 'It's your funeral,'" Dossey writes, "'You're a walking time bomb,' 'You should have had surgery yesterday,' 'There's nothing more I can do,' and so on, are not uncommon." 

In contrast, Dr. Thomas Oxman and colleagues at Dartmouth Medical School found that the factor most highly correlated with survival and a positive post-operative course after surgery was the degree of spiritual meaning in the patient's life. 

Our Beauty Way answers these questions: 

"How will I participate in my recovery and not be a victim?"

"What is my purpose?"

"What is meaningful to me?"

"How might I make a difference in the world?"