The Devil Didn't Make Me Do It

The other day my son begged me to have the banisters in our house made taller because he’s afraid he's going to hurl himself into the void one day.  I chuckled at his request, and at the memory of some of my own “dark side” thoughts, for I too have entertained elaborate and violent fantasies over the years, including the urge to turn into oncoming traffic, ski off a cliff and, yes, jump from a great height.

Weird?  Moi?  Actually, no.  A quick survey of friends (and Google) confirmed that this is completely normal.  (Which is what I assured my son.)  But what surprised me it is that it is also still “normal” to blame the biggest baddie of them all – Satan – for anything dark and shady that creeps into one's mind.  Yes, the belief that “the Devil made me do it” is still very much alive and well.   And it isn’t just the religious or superstitious that condemn the shadowy thoughts we humans are prone to; there are many well meaning “positive thinkers” out there who would also like to get rid of all negativity, thoughts included.

Why, when nature so clearly models a perfect balance of light/dark, growth/decline, activity/rest, are we humans still trying to step outside the natural order of things?  Getting rid of or suppressing half of our natural thoughts and emotions is as silly as trying to keep clouds out of the sky…and just as impossible.  A wise person recognizes that perfection, therefore, is the inclusion of EVERYTHING, not the omission of the parts we deem “negative.”

Let me use another example from nature.  Additive Color Theory tells us that black is the absence of color - for where there is no light, everything in black.  White, on the other hand, is pure light – a combination of all colors of the spectrum.  You can’t see the colors in pure sunlight until that light is refracted either through water droplets or a prism, making a rainbow.  Now imagine your soul as pure light being refracted through the prism of being human, and it starts to make sense.  Our many moods, emotions and thoughts, good and bad, are part of the intense and beautiful human rainbow.

Back to the fear of throwing oneself off of high places.  It turns out this urge, or High Place Phenomenon (or HPP) to be exact, is neither the devil nor, as Freud believed, an unconscious death wish.  The current thinking is that, “Individuals who report experiencing the phenomenon are not necessarily suicidal (or weird or crazy); rather, the experience of HPP may reflect their sensitivity to internal cues and actually affirm their will to live.” (Journal of Affective Disorders, Nov 2011, Jennifer L. Hames, Jessica D. Ribeiro, April R. Smith, Thomas E. Joiner)

What an intriguing bit of reverse psychology.  And if it’s true in this instance, I wonder what other “negative” impulses are misunderstood?   Rather than fearing or condemning your dark side, try observing it, dispassionately, knowing that it can't be controlled anymore than the clouds can.  “Give evil nothing to oppose,” says the Tao Te Ching, “and it will disappear by itself.”  In my experience, the same is true of dark thoughts.   

Rainbows?  Or black and white?   I know what I prefer.

My Gypsy Shadow

The gypsy woman is there every Saturday at the gates to the farmer’s market, one hand on her belly, the other holding her magazines.  “Big Issue?” she asks, as I walk briskly past.  “No thanks.”  I mumble, hurrying from her – uncomfortable.  Week after week, her pregnancy is growing. (It must be great for business, I tell myself.)  Most people smile politely even if they do not buy her magazine.  But not me - I feel mean in her presence.

 My feelings confuse me.  I am not a ‘hard’ person; I usually feel compassion for someone begging for a living, and often buy copies of the Big Issue from more dubious sellers than her.  And on principle, I always give money to buskers. (If they are bold enough to perform in public, then I reckon I owe them a pound.)

 The gypsy woman’s boldness is something altogether different.  She is young, with colourful shirts and rough shawl, sad, pleading black eyes and wild hair – a caricature of what a gypsy should look like.  (Such an actress, I think.)  But I am buying neither the magazine nor the “helpless me” act.  This girl is clever.  How dare she capitalise on the moral sophistication of the good people of SW London doing their part for local, sustainable agriculture!  This blend of middle class families, urban hippies and conscientious foodies can hardly justify paying £2 for an organic almond croissant but not have some spare change for a magazine, can they?

 What is wrong with me?  Why do I hate this woman?

 The irony is, as a counsellor by profession and a “wisdom seeker” by nature, my “thing” is the pursuit of understanding of the human shadow.  I adhere to the philosophy that any strong reaction to another person – good or bad – it is merely a cast-off, unloved or denied part of me being reflected in the mirror of “other” and demanding some attention.  The magic of this type of self-reflection (pardon the pun) is that it encourages love for the whole self, ‘warts and all.’  But clearly I do not love my inner gypsy…yet.

 So what are the qualities in her that I am rejecting in myself?

 I decide she is as foreign as the parrots that have taken over Richmond Park and equally as exotic and unnatural - their bright green feathers and deafening squawks make it impossible for them to blend in.   And what about me?  I am foreign all right - wilfully maintaining my American accent and cultural roots…but exotic and unnatural?  Depends on who you ask, I suppose, but I don’t feel a strong response to this idea so it must not be the root of my distaste.

 What else?  Well she might as well be holding a sign that says, “I am a helpless victim!”  But me? Internally I am screaming,  “NO WAY…I am NOT a helpless victim!”  My emotional reaction means I’m on to something.  I keep pulling at this thread and decide that, in this context, a “helpless victim” is someone who feels powerless over the circumstances of their life; someone who feels they have no choices.  I acknowledge how much I HATE that mentality when I encounter it.  Bingo.

 I focus on the “helpless victim” part of me.   This is not a pleasant task.  I realise that although I am not at the mercy of strangers, I am not in charge of my financial life either - my dependence is altogether more stealth.  The truth is, I have nothing of my own that I have earned with my own labour since I first came to London 14 years ago.  In fact, I am beholden to my ex-husband for my entire livelihood.  I may even sell my home because I can’t imagine finding a way to pay the mortgage on my own.  What’s more, I have passively accepted that I am “trapped” in the UK because I cannot take my son away from his father.  This is uncomfortable to admit, but yes, part of me is indeed a “helpless victim.”

 It’s interesting that this is being brought to my attention now, as lately I have taken steps to become more proactively self-sufficient.  So, it seems, has the gypsy woman – she may be wily for posting herself in front of a farmer’s market, but she is also smart to do so. And she’s not doing ‘nothing,’ she’s selling magazines – an appropriate choice for a pregnant foreigner with few job prospects and presumably no wealthy husband like I had.   She’s not just a helpless victim after all, but also a resourceful survivor.  And so am I.

 My hateful feelings begin to ebb as another piece of the intricate self-puzzle slots into place.  Next week I will buy a croissant… and perhaps a magazine as well.

A Fruitful Metaphor

Yesterday, as I lay in savasana at the end of a yoga class, it dawned on me that yoga is an apt metaphor for life.   Through yoga practise I explore the outer edges of my strength, flexibility and stamina.  I learn to flow rather than fight.  I learn that it is counterproductive to be in competition with anyone but myself.  I learn that there are appropriate times to be active, to work hard, to use my muscle; and times to surrender, to give in to gravity and to rest.  I learn that some days I have more to give than others.  And it’s all good.

I am certainly not the first to make this connection, and perhaps that is why yoga is so wildly popular.  But it got me thinking further that almost ANYTHING can become a metaphor for the human experience. 

This is a fractal world, where patterns repeat endlessly from the microscopic to the galactic.  Ever looked at a soap bubble and wondered at its resemblance to our own planet as seen from space?  (“As above; so below,” noted Hermes.)  We live in a hall of mirrors where everything is a reflection of something else and, ultimately, reflects the seer herself.

Take fruit, for instance.

If you thought there was a chasm separating the life of man from that of an apple, you’d be wrong.  First of all, an apple tree needs just the right amount of sun, water and nutrients, hot and cold seasons, cross pollination and judicious pruning to produce the best quality apples – sort of like families.  And like people, there are many varieties:  big and sweet; small and tart; crisp and soft, red, green, or a combination of colors; organic or “conventional” (a term that always makes me snort…shouldn’t organic be considered “conventional?”) and, of course, some that are beautiful, some that are misshapen, and even some that have worms. 

The metaphor continues once an apple has been plucked (or fallen) from the tree.  Like leaving home, there are many paths for an apple roll down.  Some don’t fall far from the branch and become fertiliser or food for the birds and bugs.  Some have more exotic destinations, like a perfect “Pink Lady” inhabiting a fancy gift basket.  While some, like the average “Granny Smith,” might get sliced up for a lunch box or made into pie.  And, over time, no matter how delicately handled, even the celebrated “Honey Crisp” will start to shrivel, wrinkle and, well, you know.

William Blake urged mankind:

”To see a world in a grain of sand,

and a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

I urge you to see your life reflected in that "Golden Delicious" you are about to bite into: A fruitful metaphor indeed.  

Happiness is...?

Having, as I do, a ‘ready, fire, aim’ personality, I unwisely offered to review a book for this blog without reading it first. Natalie Fee’s ‘The Everyday Alchemist’s Happiness Handbook’ is written in short, sharp little chapters (a bit like this blog...oh dear) and is liberally peppered with the irritating English word ‘whilst’ (I recoil at that word) whilst (see!) offering tips and techniques for cultivating more happiness.  But a deal’s a deal, and as I read her book and pondered what I’d like to say, I was inspired to deepen my own understanding and experience of this much heralded pinnacle of pursuit:  happiness.

The quirk of living in a duality, as we do, is that we can’t have one thing without also inviting its opposite any more than we can separate the poles of a magnet.  (Positive and negative are inherently inseparable.)  Dr. Demartini, a favourite philosopher and teacher of mine says that, “We attract the opposite of what we seek as a way of breaking our addiction to the thing we seek.”  A bit of a tongue twister, that, but in a nutshell he means that making happiness a goal will only invite unhappiness.

Can this be true?  And if so, what’s the alternative? 

I believe we have an inner duality that matches the outer one.  Thus there are two possible ways to experience life.  The first is from the “I” or ego perspective.  This “lower” part of us thrives on drama and the roller coaster of emotions.  It is the part of us where our personality resides, which is a rather fixed and habitual animal containing our basic traits such as optimist or pessimist, light-hearted or serious.  (Just try challenging someone’s pessimism and you’ll discover that ‘for them who believe, no proof is necessary; and for them who don’t, no proof is possible.’) The second, and perhaps more elevated way to move through life is from the “I am” perspective.  Accessing this “higher” part of ourselves allows us to experience life from a slightly detached, observer position.  From here we do not get swept into the dramas of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or the distortion of our personality, but rather accept everything we encounter and feel as part of a complex whole.  This ‘meta-position’ is, in my view, a much worthier goal than mere happiness.

In ‘The Seekers Guide’ Elizabeth Lesser says, “We have such romantic expectations of “happily ever after” that we miss joy when she comes calling.  Joy is actually a more complex emotion than sorrow.  I hesitate to talk about it for fear that I will betray its complexities and make others feel as though they are missing the party.  A joyful soul often lives in a state of what I call enchanted melancholy.  This kind of happiness contains within it many shades of feelings:  joy and grief, passion and sobriety, love and longing, innocence and wisdom.  It holds the paradoxical nature of existence in a warm and wide embrace.  More than anything, it is a sense of wonder.”  (1999, p 230)

Turns out, by the time I got to the last section of Natalie Fee’s book I discovered that this was what she was getting at all along, (making our differences are more stylistic than anything else.)  And although I can’t say her book was exactly my cup of tea, it did open the door to a deeper exploration of happiness and may lead you to do the same.

A sense of wonder is the new happiness.  Now that’s a goal worth having.

Let's Get Naked

Recently I attended a “Naked Voice” retreat in beautiful south Wales.  Despite the provocative title, it was a fully clothed event.  

The Naked Voice practice, as created by Chloe Goodchild, is not about being a ‘good’ singer.  Its purpose is to move you from a grounding of deep, non-judgemental listening, to using the voice – spoken or sung – as the mouthpiece of the authentic self.  In Chloe's words:

 “The Naked Voice is your original voice, fully-embodied, naturally-expressed, and free of self-consciousness. It is your authentic sound, as unique as your DNA or fingerprint...This program provides the vibrational building blocks to allow your true voice to come forth and be heard, perhaps for the first time since infancy...Uncovering your naked voice is about overcoming fear, awakening compassion, instilling peace of mind, and ultimately accessing who you truly are.” 

I can sum up my experience in three words:  Terrifying, liberating, transformational.  If it this sounds like your cup of tea then definitely check it out for yourself (click here.)   But as challenged and changed as I indeed was, what really grabbed me was the concept of “psychological nudity,” for it begs the question, what causes us to “cover up” our authentic selves in the first place?

Well one thing led to another, as it does, until I found myself in the Garden of Eden.  We all know the tale of the innocent and quite nude couple named Adam and Eve - the first man and woman that God created.  They lived in naked bliss until Eve was tempted by the Devil to break the rules and taste the apple from the Tree of Knowledge (a.k.a. forbidden fruit.)  The punishment for doing so was severe:  They were kicked out of the garden and made to wear fig leaves. 

Of course one can take this story literally (excellent for condemning all women for their connection to the “original sin”), but I think its true power is revealed when considered thus:  Adam and Eve were not actual people, but metaphorical representatives of our unfettered, unadulterated nature – the perfect balance of yin (Eve) and yang (Adam).  And perhaps being “in paradise” is akin to being like children, uncomplicated by “knowledge,” and who view the world through fresh, innocent eyes. 

Just watch a toddler.  They express themselves fluidly and without self-consciousness – from joy to rage and everything in between.  Singing is not a problem for them, and they will happily run around in the buff because it feels so nice.  But then, inevitably, mom and dad tell them they must put their clothes on (and for God’s sake, don’t touch yourself “there!”) because it’s indecent.  They must not be too noisy (bad), too quiet (weird), too happy (unrealistic), too sad (indulgent), too angry (embarrassing) or too honest (ungrateful).  In other words, they learn to tame their natural impulses and feel SHAME, which, in my estimation, is just another form of fig leaf.  And that, my friends, is what getting expelled from paradise is all about.

For many of us, much of our adult life is devoted to getting back to the garden - to reclaim what was lost and reunite our inner Adam and Eve. Thankfully, there are many, many different maps for the journey - the Naked Voice is just one.  

Maybe this story is just the encouragement you need to begin stripping off?  I dare you.  And trust me, you need only feel the sun on your bare skin (or sing your name to a large group of strangers!) to know, instinctively, that being naked is what life is all about.

Miracle Number Three

It is said that events happen in ‘threes.’  Apparently even miracles adhere to this formula, for I am aware of a trio of them surrounding my mother’s death.

The first miracle I wrote about in the post ‘Everyday Magic.’  (The story’s too long to re-tell so click here to have a look.) Now you know - the “friend” I wrote about who was struggling with cancer was actually my mom.  I kept her identity hidden because she wished it that way.  She feared the judgment of others and felt embarrassed by her cancer diagnosis.  Her secret was a real challenge for me, but with respect to our differences I had to accept that she valued privacy more than she wanted support.

Mom passed away at the end of October (2011), but two weeks before she died the second miracle happened – word got out.   Suddenly the very friends whose judgment she feared turned up in droves to be with her.  Her room was filled not only with flowers, but with laughter, singing, and love.  Yet despite this miraculous turn of events, she refused to discuss the possibility of dying, even up to the bitter end.  Thus there was much left unsaid between us.  In fact, I might never have known what her illness was all about if the third miracle had not occurred.

Soon after her passing I got busy helping my dad de-clutter the house.  While clearing out an old bookcase I discovered years worth of old New Age Journal magazines.  Mom and I had shared a love of all things alternative, and that magazine was one of our favorites before it went out of print.  So, for sentimental reasons, I rescued a few from the recycling bin and tucked them into my suitcase.

One morning, a couple of weeks later, I was back at home and struggling to come to terms with her passing.  As I sat down to a cup of tea the stack of magazines caught my eye.  I picked up the first one and opened it at random.  The article I’d turned to was called, When a Mother Dies by Andrea Cagan.  I froze – amazed by the coincidence but also a bit scared about what I might read.  It was the true story of a woman dying from an abdominal cancer (just like mom) whose husband tells the author, “Control…it was always about control.”  That was my mom to a “T.”  The hair stood up on my arms.  I kept reading and choked up as the author described how, at the end of her life, the dying woman  “…had been demonstrating how to receive as she accepted all that her family, her friends, and even I, a complete stranger, were offering to her.  She took all of it.  I imagine how hard it must have been for her at first, and yet how beautiful it must have finally become, to be able to fully receive.”   That did it.  Out came the tears.  I felt certain that mom was telling me about her own death, and I was so relieved that she indeed “got it” before she died – she allowed people to love her. 

The author concluded that we can all “…choose to do this now, and not wait until [we] have no more choices and no more time.”  I believe that that was mom’s real message.   Drop the judgment.  Drop the control.  Let love in. 

I can’t imagine what it took for mom to orchestrate getting that one magazine (out of hundreds) into my hands and open to the right page, but I’m so grateful for miracle number three.   Thank you, mom.  I’ll do my best to live by that advice.

To Snooze or not to Snooze: That is the Question

I can’t go one more minute without writing this.  Unwashed dishes in the sink be damned.  Messy desk "that needs to be clean before I can be creative” be damned.  And above all, my fear that this is not a neatly folded idea that I am about to present be damned!  Sometimes you just know that you can’t hit the snooze button again.  No.  Today I am awake. 

This morning I was writing my “morning pages” - three pages of long-hand, free flowing words which are meant to be the equivalent of sweeping the crumbs from the nooks and crannies of the psyche each day - when I came across this quote in the margins of my journal:  

“As frightening and abusive as life with a crazy-maker is, 

we find it far less threatening than the challenge of a creative life of our own.”  

That sucker hit me between the eyes. Ouch.

My personal definition of crazy-makers is this:  Any person or situation which has enabled me to NOT live up to my green and juicy potential, but which I have instead put up with (no…FED) for the sake of an easier, albeit disempowered, and sanitised life.

This type of realisation is not for the faint hearted.  Why on earth have I done this?  The answer, as ever, is found in the shadow.  Befriending one’s shadow - the original “dark side” - is a seemingly endless process, but a worthy one.  For with each shamed, neglected and split-off piece of me (as embodied by the crazy-makers) that I bring back into the light of awareness, I become just a little bit more of whom I was born to be - I wake up to my own potential wholeness.

One of my most poignant wake up calls was back in 2004 when my kids were small and my marriage was faltering.  Although it was convenient for me to blame my unhappiness on my big-living, hard-drinking, husband, part of me knew that this was a cop out.  I knew I was complicit in our charade, but how?

I found out during my first taste of “shadow work” during a introductory course at Re-Vision, the Centre for Integrative Psychosynthesis, where I eventually trained to be a counsellor.  We were led through a guided meditation where we visited a cabin in the woods of our imagination.  Once there we were instructed to answer a knock at the door and discover a part of our shadow that wanted to be known.  Imagine my surprise when I opened the door to Dionysus – the god of wine, ritual madness and ecstasy – the “biggest-living, hardest-drinking” archetype of them all!  I told myself that I was NOTHING like my husband, but there was no denying that here he was, Dionysus himself, coming out of MY psyche. 

I left that course resolved to make friends with Dionysus (an ongoing process even still), and to find out what other parts of my shadow were being mirrored by the crazy-makers in my life.  (If I have a religion, that’s it.)  Not the dishes, not the desk, and not anyone “out there” can be blamed for my skating through life.  I am the one who hits the snooze button.  But the very good news is this:  life endlessly re-sets the alarm, and it is our choice to ignore it or get up...each and every day.

Are you awake?