Chapter One
Self
ANSWERING THE CALL OF THE SELF
How shall I grasp it? Do not grasp it. That
which remains when there is no more grasping is the self.
—Panchadari When our son was in third grade, I asked him why he didn't want to sign up for after-school activities. His eyes deepened. He stood up and looked out the window, and I could see he was turning in on himself before he replied. "To be honest, Mom, I don't have time."
When I asked him what he meant by that, he explained. "I need to come home and have time to play, to watch cartoons, to be with you, to play with all the toys in my room, sometimes just to walk around my room, maybe go to the store and have time to play with my friends in the building." He said that all day people told him what to do, and there was no way he was going to put himself in a situation where people were going to continue to tell him what to do after school.
To me this reflected a simple and direct understanding of what made him happy and rounded out his life to his satisfaction. He understood the joy and the serenity that simple things brought to him. He seemed wholly unfettered by the thought that he might be missing out on something or that he was not doing what his good friends at school were doing. He was not anxious that he was not following their program because he was in touch with what felt good to him.
I have always enjoyed my son's company because he is so present in the moment. Being with him can make the most ordinary activity seem fun and exciting. To be in tune with the moment is to be in tune with life's subtle pulse and to have at your fingertips the wisdom of saints and sages. Ultimately, becoming more spiritual will not make life something different. What will change is how we experience the life we have.
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Instead of standing on the shore and proving to ourselves that the ocean cannot
carry us, let us venture on its waters just to see.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
SOUL AND SELF
We have now discovered that it was an intellectually unjustified presumption on our forefathersÆ part to assume that Man has a Soul, ... that there is a power inherent in it which builds up the body, supports its life, heals its ills and enables the soul to live independently of the body, ... and that beyond our empirical present, there is a spiritual world from which the soul receives knowledge of spiritual things whore origins cannot be discovered in this physical world. But ... it is just as presumptuous and fantastic for us to assume that matter products spirit, that apes give rise to human beings, ... that the brain cells manufacture thoughts and that all this could not possibly be other than it is.
—Carl Jung
The individual self is the channel through which the soul finds expression. If it is tangled in the ropes of self-hatred, false identity and confusion, the soul will have a difficult time shining through. When life is confusing or overwhelming, or when our lives allow little room for personalized variation—in a troubled family or an autocratic workplace, for example—the self goes into hiding. When this happens, we learn to look outward rather than inward for answers.
Often soul is not regarded as a part of ordinary life, but as something belonging to the sphere of religion or metaphysics. But individually we have the right to open communication with soul, just as we have the right to feel the sun on our face and to breathe the air that surrounds us. Access to soul energy enhances access to ourselves, and to a deeper reality. Although we cannot necessarily describe this other reality, we can experience and share it with others who also are able to experience it.
Many people who seek an inward path go into therapy to begin to untie their personal knots and solve emotional issues. Most paths to self have two or more people to anchor the experience or create a holding environment, whether it is the relationship between guru and disciple, therapist and client, sponsor and sponsored, pastor and parishioner, teacher and student, or individual and group. It appears that we need a guide to show the way and to help anchor the way as we seek ourselves, someone who is willing to walk with us as we keep ourselves on our path. As C. S. Lewis said, "It takes two to see one."
In my work as a psychodramatist, I do not heal my clients. Rather, I involve people in the process of accessing their own internal healer. A trusting relationship with a teacher or guide is important to "hold" our growth process, but the ultimate responsibility remains with the self. Therapy is both a process of dismantling and reexamining problem aspects of the self and rebuilding and reshaping from the inside out. Healing and soul growth are part of the mystery of life.
Therapy is a step on the way to soul realization, not an end in itself. If we spin forever in the cycle of sorting out the past without continuing the movement toward soul and self, we may become victimized by our own search. The goal of therapy is to make the unconscious conscious, to bring psychological and behavioral patterns and repetitions into the light. Then we can see the patterns for what they are, understand their cause, release them and reintegrate them back into our unconscious in a resolved state.
In the process we achieve a less contaminated vision of who we are, and of that part of ourselves that is alive and connected to spirit.
In this light, we can see that the self and the soul are truly a source of nurturance that is always available. When we do not see the soul as this, we deny ourselves a fundamental source of sustenance. When we sww the soul as something we have to attain or run after, we diminish it in depth and breadth and throw it outside the self onto the pile of objects that we must acquire. The soul can never be acquired by running after it. Only by sitting in stillness with it can we come to know it.
The path to soul is a path of gradual involvement. It is a process of getting to know the soul and self through direct experience. The reason a therapeutic process is so helpful on the road to self is that, when we sit quietly with ourselves, all of the unfinished business, the old hurts and unquenched longings, begin to rumble around and make themselves felt. If we cannot remain present through this process of feeling our painful feelings, sorting through them and resolving them, we cannot remain present with ourselves. When we have sorted out the problem and learned methods of being with our inner pain rather than running from it, we can sit through these feelings and eventually get to serenity with self, and through that, to soul.
All too often the therapeutic process is regarded as an end in itself when actually it is a path, a process to connect us with our soul. Some use therapy as a means to build spiritual consciousness. If we seek only spiritual consciousness and refuse to work through our own darkest depths, what we pursue is God thinking or the practice of thinking spiritual thoughts because we have read or heard them and recognize their benefit. We need to go deeper to contact our spirit, the soul that lives within us, that soul we can contact through quiet and meditation. Once we have learned to access the soul through stillness, we can then draw this consciousness actively through ourselves and into our lives.
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My greatest teachers are the afflicted. Go to them in jails, in hospitals, and ask, "Why do you want to live?" I walked through bospital corridors, going into rooms, asking people who had things I was afraid of, "Why do you want to live? How do you manage?" They were always honest and willing to help. Some said, "Sit down, I'll tell you." Others said, "Come back, IÆll make a list for you." What impressed me was that the list did not contain pages of philosophical discussion about the meaning of life. They said things that were so simple. ôI painted a pictureö said someone with no fingers: a brush had to be tied to her hand. ôI looked out the window, and it is a beautiful day." ôThe nurse rubbed my back. " "My family called and an coming to see me." The lists just went on with simple daily events. And I began to realize that this is really what life is about.
—Bernie S. Siegel, M.D.
THE SHADOW SELF
Knowing your own darkness is the best method
for dealing with the darkness of other people.
—Carl Jung
When there are parts of ourselves that we feel are not acceptable, either to ourselves or to our world, we cast them into a darkness deep in our psyches. These parts of ourselves coalesce to form what Carl Jung called the "shadow self," or the self whose existence we attempt to deny. Although we deny this self consciously, unconsciously we fear that we carry within us something monstrous that threatens to rear its head if we do not use our psychic energy to keep it hidden.
Inevitably, however, that monster refuses to stay hidden. What we refuse to see or acknowledge in ourselves, we identify readily in others. Often we are projecting our unwanted characteristic onto another person, attributing it only to them rather than accepting it as part of ourselves. It is an unconscious attempt to give voice and shape to that part of ourselves we have silenced. When we have a powerful reaction to a characteristic that we classify as negative or difficult in another person, it is worthwhile to ask ourselves if any, part of that characteristic exists in us.
Those parts of of ourselves that we feel are well hidden are only too evident to thos...
